We lie on a mattress in the garden, the tall grass tickling our bare toes, the mountain sun warming our backs. Ahead of us, in a deodar tree, perches a brilliant blue-black Himalayan crow, its shrieking call a familiar interruption in the afternoon stillness.
She says: “Give me a book like ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’. I want something well written. Or like the book you gave me before my trip to China – Once Upon a Time in the East.”
Both are books about mother and daughter: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy is the most powerful book about mother and daughter I have ever read, so moving, so beautifully written, and so unforgettable. The novel “Once Upon a Time in the East” by Xiaolu Guo Guo is powerful in a different way, as Guo tells her story of being the daughter of a mother who was a Red Guard in the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Mother and daughter books are a genre I’ve been obsessed with in the past year, a genre that seems to be everywhere. I’m glad my mother died, McCurdy says in her memoir of being a child actress who was pressured by her mother. In her book How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jung wrote about caring for her famous mother, Erica Jung, while she had dementia; She also expresses the pain of her childhood, as she was alternately abandoned by her mother or appears in her writings as an obese, unloved child. Both books are raw and honest, and I understood the anger in them. But I kept wanting more complexity, more questioning, more of the mother’s side of things.
I think that’s enough with mother and daughter books. I’ve read more than my share – all these memoirs and novels like The Far Field and Burnt Sugar. However, I am no closer to resolving the complexities of mother-daughter law; I still don’t have the secret formula to happiness with my mother.
Next to me, September Baby stretches her arms above her head and says nothing, waiting.
I think about my recent readings. How about this memoir written by a woman who worked at Amazon – The Exit Interview by Christy Coulter?
My daughter shakes her head. She enjoys learning about the world of technology, and loved Careless People and the Facebook diary offering. But a year of business school, a year of discussing potential careers; She wants something different today.
We stretch our legs and think. Then a crescendo of barking rents the air. Wild dogs outside the house gather on a small white dog – a stranger to the pack. Growling, barking and screaming. Bessie climbs the rock to see what’s going on. Her nose twitches, and her ears stand up. It’s safe inside, but just that. One of them, perhaps the man at the dhaba on the corner of the road, shouts and throws water on the herd and they disperse.
Now there is silence and we wait for it to settle down and we return to the question of which book to read.
Something well written but far from the office, narrative storytelling, the kind of edgy you like?
London Falls by Patrick Radden How? The true life story of a British boy who pretended to be the son of a wealthy Russian and fell to his death in the River Thames?
She frowns, wiping her face in thought. I loved this author’s previous book, his takes on America’s OxyContin scandal and the Sackler family in Empire of Pain. But not today. She spent a year tracking markets and corporate failures. She wants to get out of this world for a bit. It’s summer and I’ve traveled halfway around the world to get here. She’s tired; She wants a book that will instantly grab her, transport her to a fantasy world.
It’s time for me to pull out the big guns – my murder mysteries. I save it for when I really need to disappear into a book. Because you’re immediately immersed in the mystery – in a world where something is definitely not right, where someone has been murdered.
The book lets you play the role of a detective, joining the side of those who restore order. You start evaluating suspects immediately, trying to figure out: Who is he? Is the character lying or telling the truth? Then, all the pieces of the puzzle slowly fall into place, the killer is caught, and justice is served. What could be more satisfying?
“Try Tana French,” I said, handing her my spare Kindle.
It suddenly became cold and I looked up at the sky as clouds began to form and rise over the hills. If the breeze doesn’t push them away, the day will turn into a wet and rainy day, a good time to pack up our bedding on the grass and retreat indoors. But Tana French works until then.
I love Tana French’s murder mysteries for their sense of the Irish countryside, and the way the landscape becomes a character in itself as it slowly changes the mood of the murder investigation world. Then there is the deep psychological dive into the minds of investigators, into the deep strategy of the way investigators interrogate different witnesses. I’ve read most of them, but I’ve only saved a few for one day like this.
Then it’s sunny again, and the breeze blows the clouds away. Stillness returns, the sun is back now, but the air seems more awake. It’s the perfect mood for mystery. And now, September Baby and I are spending Mother’s Day weekend at a Tana French murder mysteries reading party.
(Sonia Dutta Chowdhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a personalized book service. For all questions on life and literature, email sonyasbookbox@gmail.com.)
