498 reviews for:

Sea Of Poppies

Amitav Ghosh

3.93 AVERAGE


How had it happened that when choosing the men and women who were to be torn from this subjugated plain, the hand of destiny had stayed so far inland, away from the busy coastlines, to alight on the people who were, of all, the most stubbornly rooted in the silt of the Ganga, in a soil that had to be sown with suffering to yield its crop of story and song? It was as if fate had thrust its fist through the living flesh of the land in order to tear away a piece of its stricken heart


Ghosh is a terrific wordsmith, blending the different creoles of India and China's coastal regions in such a clever way that at times I was stunned into laughter. Because of this my favourite narrative threads were the ones actually taking place on the ship, because I saw in the linguistic patterns that Ghosh portrayed something that mirrored the speech I usually hear around me. Which, of course--the history that this novel explores is also the history that Singapore is rooted in.

The scope of the story is suitably sprawling, and Ghosh weaves together narrative threads and wittily sketched out characters that span an opium factory worker turned coolie, a half-Chinese half-Parsi convict travelling west, and the son of an American slave mistaken for a white gentlemen. Ghosh is great at taking colonial stereotypes and imbuing them with depth and an insider's intimacy. The Guardian review describes his approach as "maximalist", which is about right; he just bombards you with so much information and dialect that you end up going along for the ride. It's great fun and by the end deeply moving.

Ghosh almighty!

(Instagram @elle_reads)

BOOK REVIEW ⁠
[Sea of Poppies] The poppy trade changes lives from every nation.⁠
//⁠
WHAT I LIKED⁠
So many books gloss over the different groups within "culture clashes." Ghosh does not. He attributes the same level of detail to the relations between people of the caste system, white foreigners of different heritage, genders of each group, and the overall imbalance of power between Indians, Asians, Europeans, etc. All relationships equally propel the story. His characters are concrete without being overly cliche. ⁠
//⁠
I love Ghosh's control of time within this book. There is a mix of abrupt and gentle foreshadowing as well as a great balance of background context both for the characters history and history at large.⁠
//⁠
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE⁠
There are a few cliches in building the basic character (the large silent man, the beautiful talkative flirt), but they don't always follow conventional lines. In this sense, I have less idea of what they will do despite feeling I know them.⁠
//⁠
Warning: it does end in a cliffhanger. There will be three books total.⁠
//⁠
Sea of Poppies (by Amitav Ghosh) ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️4/5⁠
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize⁠
//⁠
Favorite Pages: 37, 107, 185, 193, 234, 257, 278, 357, 408, 411, 439⁠
//⁠

I was skeptical, initially, about Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies. I've read so many novels in which a building, character, or geographical feature becomes a metaphor for the entire country/culture of India (or, in the case of Shalimar the Clown, Kashmir). Here, it seemed to me, was the same conceit, being recycled in the form of a ship: the Ibis, a former slaver now refitted to carry opium, progresses from the harbors of the sacred Ganges beyond the Black Water one season in 1838, transporting an unlikely group of convicts, coolies, lascars and officers toward the island of Mauritius. I was wary of another facile equation of a concept like "diversity" or "journey" or "flowing river" with the whole of India. I needn't have been concerned, though. Ghosh's novel may work along a familiar pattern, but it's executed in a convincing and original way, which quickly won me over and kept me fascinated throughout.

To me, the most exciting thing about Sea of Poppies is the use of language. Unlike many books involving "dialect," Ghosh's novel doesn't pit nonstandard against standard English, creating a simple, easily-evaluated contrast (for example, "backwoods" dialect used to betoken a character's lack of education, or "urban" dialect used to signal that a character is hard-boiled). Instead, Ghosh pays close attention to the subtleties of MANY separate lingual groups, and lets them all mingle with one another in a rich mélange of well-realized, consistent but flexible voices. Take this passage, in which we get the seagoing pidgin of Serang Ali (the commander of the native Indian or lascar crew), the Indie-fied Irish brogue of the ship's captain, and the lightly inflected cadence of Ghosh's narrator, which blends subtly into the voices of the different characters:


       'No,' Zachary laughed. 'N'how bout you? Serang Ali catchi wife?'

       'Serang Ali wife-o hab makee die,' came the answer. 'Go top-side, to hebbin. By'mby, Serang Ali catchi nother piece wife...'

       A week later, Serang Ali accosted Zachary again: 'Malum Zikri! Captin-bugger blongi poo-shoo-foo. He hab got plenty sick! Need one piece dokto. No can chow-chow tiffin. Allo tim do chhee-chhee, pee-pee. Plenty smelly in Captin cabin.'

       Zachary took himself off to the Captain's stateroom and was told that there was nothing wrong: just a touch of the back-door trots - not the flux, for there was no sign of blood, no spotting in the mustard. 'I know how to take care o' meself: not the first time I've had a run of the squitters and collywobbles.'


I loved reading Serang Ali's dialogue; my mother and her brothers grew up on Oahu, and I grew up hearing Hawaiian pidgin bandied about whenever my uncles were visiting (my mom never picked it up, for some reason). The lascar pidgin bears certain similarities to Hawaiian pidgin, and I wonder how much contact there was between the two regions while both languages were developing. In particular, the use of "plenty" as an intensifier is common to both ("He hab got plenty sick"), and something about "Go top-side, to hebbin" is very familiar. I don't know much at all about Indian and sea-faring languages and pidgins, but I got the impression that Ghosh has a very careful ear and a thorough understanding of how language functions in society, which was a joy to read. For example, certain people in the novel "code switch" - that is, speak differently according to the company in which they find themselves. Zachary, the light-skinned American son of a freed female slave and her former owner, comes to feel at his ease with Serang Ali, and they speak to each other in a way that shows they trust each other - a way that doesn't try to hide their respective backgrounds.


       Three days later, exactly as promised, the twisted hills of Mauritius appeared on the jamma bow, with Port Louis nestled in the bay below.

       'I'll be dickswiggered!' said Zachary, in grudging admiration. 'Don't that just beat the Dutch? You sure that the right place?'

       'What I tell you no? Serang Ali Number One sabbi ship-pijjin.'


Yet in different company, such as the ship's white captain and belligerent lower-class first mate, Zachary speaks in standard English even when the other officers are speaking non-standard English - a subtle acknowledgment of his own inferior social position and/or respect for the other men. In the scene below, Zachary has a different motive for putting a high-class spin on his speech: he's conversing with Paulette Lambert, the daughter of a French botanist, who grew up speaking French and Bhojpuri, and whose English is at least as unorthodox as Zachary's own:


       'Is something the matter?' Zachary said, alarmed by her pallor. 'Are you all right, Miss Lambert?'

       'An idee came to my mind,' said Paulette, trying to make light of her sudden turn of thought. 'It struck me that I too would love to go to the Mauritius on the Ibis. Just like Jodu, working on a ship.'

       Zachary laughed. 'Believe me, Miss Lambert, a schooner's no place for a woman - lady, I mean, begging your pardon. Especially not someone who is accustomed to living like this...' He made a gesture in the direction of the loaded table.

       'Is that indeed so, Mr. Reid?' said Paulette, raising her eyebrows. 'So it is not possible, according to you, for a woman to be a marin?'

...

'Marine?' he said in surprise. 'No, Miss Lambert, there sure aren't any woman marines that I ever heard of.'


The plot of Sea of Poppies mixes a couple of standard plots - the "diverse people thrown together unexpectedly" with the "seagoing adventure" and a hefty pinch of the "political commentary" - but it's the manner of telling that I found particularly unique and engaging in this novel. Much like gender criticism that points out the ways in which every presentation of gender is performative and therefore involves aspects of drag, Ghosh emphasizes to his reader that there is no un-accented language, no manner of speaking that does not make claims, whether true or false, about the speaker. The range of lingual contexts Ghosh evokes here is staggering, and he is able to deal in subtle lingual differences as well as broad ones. In a smoking-room scene involving four white, middle-class Englishmen, for example, he expertly adjusts each man's level of good-old-boy bluster to indicate his position in the pecking order. (This same scene also features brain-boiling pieces of logic such as the British assertion that war with China is morally mandated: "We need only think of the poor Indian peasant - what will become of him if his opium can't be sold in China?") Not only that, but Ghosh has a similar sensitivity about quicksand nature of racial, religious, and sexual dynamics: Zachary's biracial background, for example, is something about which he's constantly on his guard. Much of the time, it's rendered surprisingly irrelevant and he comes off as a bit paranoid, but given the wrong set of circumstances it can erupt into unforeseen danger in a matter of moments.

Sea of Poppies is not a perfect novel - the exposition is sometimes fairly awkward, with one character leading a second into an information-dump about the back-story of a third. And there is a touch of so-called "Rushdie-itis" here and there - every time the narrative featured a flash-forward about different people who would, one day, end up in the character Deeti's shrine, I winced a little bit as I remembered Midnight's Children. Nevertheless, there was so much here that was unique and intriguing that I'm eager to pick up the next two books in this projected trilogy as soon as they become available. The originality of the language, the social insight, and the crafting of compelling characters makes me eager to spend more time in Ghosh's world.

2.5 stars

I really was hoping this book was going to be a 4/5 stars. I love historical fiction and like when the book follows a bunch of different characters that all meet up. However, I just didn’t like it.

I listened to the audiobook and wouldn’t recommend. The author narrated very well but after learning more about the narrator I wouldn’t support him in the future. That being said, I don’t think I would have gotten through the book without the audiobook- I was unmotivated to pick up the book.

I liked the premise but unfortunately I didn’t like it.
adventurous dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective medium-paced
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

A superb book. Even after 600 pages, makes you want to start the next book in the series right away.
adventurous challenging funny tense slow-paced
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I put this book on my to-read list after hearing an interview with Ghosh on the radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge (which is tied with Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me as my favorite radio show). The part of the interview I found most intriguing was the discussion about the language in the book, and that's a large part of what I enjoyed about the book itself. The amalgamation of Bengali, French, English, various other Indian and Chinese dialects, and 19th-century maritime patois made the reading somewhat slow-going at times, but I was surprised at just how much meaning I could glean from a sentence composed of words I couldn't necessarily define individually.

Ghosh's characters show their caste and breeding---or the caste and breeding they hope to project---through their choice of language. I enjoyed reading about the misunderstandings that happened because of the wide variety of languages the characters used, and how the characters choose to resolve these misunderstandings, if they choose to resolve them at all.

The ending was abrupt but fitting, and I find myself wanting to go back and read the book again to look for more clues about the direction the book will take. I did take some time to skim back through, but I've got too many other books to read to immediately re-read this one. It will be on my re-read list, though.

For the complete book review, please visit my blog, Imperfect Happiness.
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No