Would've been great, really, if I hadn't read a Professor Shonku with an annoyingly similar premise. (Without the entire fantasmagoria and other creatures and the resolution, of coure.)

Bangla sahityo has ruined me.

My relationship with Harry Potter has been an obsessive one. I have pored over pages. I've trawled the internet for every spare nugget of information on the series. I've memorized lines of dialogues. I've watched all the movies. I've cried at the end of the last book. I've fallen in love with more than one character.

               Hogwarts has helped heal heartbreak, ease bereavement, and provide a sanctuary for a bewildered youngster like no one else. Therefore, 'The Casual Vacancy' would have to do very VERY hard work if it had to live up to the previous stalwarts.

And it did, internet, IT DID! It is a beautiful book. It's not suckerpunch-let-me-suck-you-into-my-world like Harry Potter, of course. I don't think anyone is capable of replicating that. Not even Rowling herself. (Also, to give credit to her, Rowling actually went out and wrote something completely different and put herself out there to be criticized and dissected when she ALREADY HAS ELEVENTY TRILLION POUNDS AND HAS WRITTEN HARRY POTTER. If it were me, I would just lounge the rest of my life away. Writing Potter would have guaranteed that much.)

'The Casual Vacancy' was well-written, well-plotted, and some of the scenes are masterfully Rowling. My heart, it kind of broke in the end. The effort of creating a world as far away from Hogwarts as possible is evident. And Rowling, thank god, proves to be deft storyteller even when she restricts herself to one small parish populated by the non-wand people.

The book is not Harry. But it's definitely, at least, a Neville Longbottom. And who can resist his underdog charm?

 

This is a lovely book. A quaint book. A book extremely readable.

The problem, as I see it, lies in the fact that I demand more from my reads. I want them to evoke other words.

Words like 'overwhelming'. Or 'eccentric'. Even, for lack of others, 'unpredictable'. 

Jeebon ta boddo pnechalo jinish, dadabhai. Ei goto du hoptay ekebare haarey haarey ter peyechhi seta. Notun chakri peye, purono chakri chhere, boss er songe jhogra kore...sob miliye ekebare jachchetai byapar. Nawa-khawar somoy chhilo na, boi porar somoy ar thakbe ki kore?

Kintu ta bole ki boi porbo na? Nishchoi porbo. Pnechalo jeebonta niye deerghoshwas phelte phelte majhraatey ghume dhule asha chokh duto ke tene dhore chot kore ektu bhoot, dakat, shonda daroga der khoborakhobor niye ashbo.

Ei boi khana bhai boddo bhalo. Thik chhottobelar anandamelar moto, sheeter sokale roddure pith diye komolalebu khawar moto, half-yearly porikkhar shesh porikkha ta diye bari pherar pothe pujor prothom gondho pawar moto bhalo. Ei pora Dilli te, seta ki ekta kom kotha?

“They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be.”


Really? Alzheimer's? You had to choose this guy? 

Translations bother me. I keep thinking that I must be missing out on so much because I'm not reading this in its original version...and then I end up feeling vaguely dissatisfied throughout the reading process.

In fact, translations of works closer home bother me even more. Because then, I know for certain that I'm missing out on a lot.
 
Don't get me wrong. I loved the stories. And the woman stuns me. And now I want to learn Urdu and read Sadat Hussain Manto.

But then, suddenly, as I am reading, in one curious turn of phrase, in one halting sentence, the inadequacy of English strikes me once again.

And I finish the book with a slight sense of discontent.  

One day, when I was throwing a tantrum at J and K's place, demanding books to borrow so that I could read during my impending 28-hour train journey, K handed me this book. I was assured that I would enjoy it.

And...it is not that I didn't.

I've never read any Argentinian author before, and so this was completely uncharted territory. Also, De Santis did amuse by all the tongue-in-cheek references to ALL the genres of detective fiction. But I demand a surprise at the end of my whodunits, and I could see this resolution coming from miles away.

I guess my philistine detective story-loving mind is forever expecting the unexpected.
Agatha Christie has ruined me.