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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Evocative and detailed setting
This is the first book of a trilogy about the Opium Wars. That's when China attempted to end opium imports and Britain (guided by big corporations) straight-up went to war with them to violently force opium onto their people. Britain called it a war for 'free trade.'
It's a story about all the bad bedfellows: corporations, empire, white supremacy, slavery, free trade, addiction, and war. And all of that could feel very preachy and masculine in someone else's hands. But Ghosh tells a rollicking, swashbuckling, playful and heartfelt story -- that also passes the Bechdel test right away.
I love this kind of novel, where you get to nestle in with a huge cast of characters living through wild, meticulously-researched historical events which are also deeply relevant to today's problems. I'm excited to read the rest of the trilogy.
p.s. Imperialists are Skeksis.
It's a story about all the bad bedfellows: corporations, empire, white supremacy, slavery, free trade, addiction, and war. And all of that could feel very preachy and masculine in someone else's hands. But Ghosh tells a rollicking, swashbuckling, playful and heartfelt story -- that also passes the Bechdel test right away.
I love this kind of novel, where you get to nestle in with a huge cast of characters living through wild, meticulously-researched historical events which are also deeply relevant to today's problems. I'm excited to read the rest of the trilogy.
p.s. Imperialists are Skeksis.
adventurous
emotional
informative
tense
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
What a great cast of characters--peasants, opium addicts, a French woman who speaks Bengali that sounds like it comes from the docks, a dispossessed raja, a free black sailor from the US, a religious zealot. This book is set in India just before the opium wars. It illustrates issues surrounding colonization and the opium trade in an interesting story.
I almost considered not reviewing this, but I’d made a resolution to myself that I would post about every book I read for the sake of crystallising what I took away from it. To put this book in perspective: I’ve started reading with post-it flags to mark passages I love or things that I want to come back to when I write about it later. I didn’t mark a single passage in Sea of Poppies. Not one post-it flag. The only thing I considered marking was a passage that was hilariously difficult to follow.
I’m not saying it was terrible, but my overriding impression of it revolved around the use of outdated language. I assume what happened was that Ghosh spent months researching the precise way that certain classes of people would have spoken at the time of the book’s continuity. But rather than enhancing the realism of the book, it (a) feels like Ghosh got too bogged down in the details of language instead of making the character bounce off the page; and (b) completely blocks your ability to understand what’s happening in parts. E.g:
That’s just one example, and the first one that I came across while flicking through the book. I don’t see what the point is of a list like that is, other than setting a scene. And if the words themselves don’t correspond to an image (e.g. if you have no idea what the words mean), then it fails in that job. And to be honest, it takes quite a bit of digging to discover what these words mean (“dumbpoke” apparently correlates to “dum pukht”, or “slow cook”. “Petersilly” might be “petersillie”, which is German for parsley - when these are English people living in India, the reasons for their using German words for spices is beyond me. And I still have no translation for “bobachee-connah” -I assume it means something like ‘master of the house’, but any googling leads me to quotes from the book itself). And in some cases, they’re entirely useless (in this passage, “muttongosht” is used when “mutton” could suffice).
We’re talking here about a 470 page book that’s written in this manner. It’s frustrating. I was always told that the more invisible the writing style, the better. If writing sutures you into the milieu of the book and allows you to forget that you’re even reading altogether, then that’s ideal. Sometimes I’m okay with a noticeable writing style if it’s clever (e.g. Special Topics in Calamity Physics), but if I notice it and I dislike it, I suddenly find it difficult to lose myself in, or even enjoy the book. Unfortunately, that was the case here.
I’m not saying it was terrible, but my overriding impression of it revolved around the use of outdated language. I assume what happened was that Ghosh spent months researching the precise way that certain classes of people would have spoken at the time of the book’s continuity. But rather than enhancing the realism of the book, it (a) feels like Ghosh got too bogged down in the details of language instead of making the character bounce off the page; and (b) completely blocks your ability to understand what’s happening in parts. E.g:
There was green turtle soup, served artfully in the animals’ shells, a Bobotie pie, a dumbpoke of muttongosht, a tureen of Burdwaun stew, concocted from boiled hens and pickled oysters, a foogath of venison, a dish of pomfrets, soused in vinegar and sprinkled with petersilly, a Vinthaleaux of beef, with all the accompaniments, and platters of tiny roasted ortolans and pigeons, with the birds set out in the arrowhead shapes of flocks in flight. The table’s centrepiece was a favourite of the Bethel bobachee-connah.
That’s just one example, and the first one that I came across while flicking through the book. I don’t see what the point is of a list like that is, other than setting a scene. And if the words themselves don’t correspond to an image (e.g. if you have no idea what the words mean), then it fails in that job. And to be honest, it takes quite a bit of digging to discover what these words mean (“dumbpoke” apparently correlates to “dum pukht”, or “slow cook”. “Petersilly” might be “petersillie”, which is German for parsley - when these are English people living in India, the reasons for their using German words for spices is beyond me. And I still have no translation for “bobachee-connah” -I assume it means something like ‘master of the house’, but any googling leads me to quotes from the book itself). And in some cases, they’re entirely useless (in this passage, “muttongosht” is used when “mutton” could suffice).
We’re talking here about a 470 page book that’s written in this manner. It’s frustrating. I was always told that the more invisible the writing style, the better. If writing sutures you into the milieu of the book and allows you to forget that you’re even reading altogether, then that’s ideal. Sometimes I’m okay with a noticeable writing style if it’s clever (e.g. Special Topics in Calamity Physics), but if I notice it and I dislike it, I suddenly find it difficult to lose myself in, or even enjoy the book. Unfortunately, that was the case here.
I might have enjoyed this more had it not been for the awfully sub-par narration in the Audible version. The narrator simply has no ear to convey this polyglot cast. He especially fails at portraying the Indian characters, mispronouncing such common names as Ravana and Benares and giving key figures accents that sound like some kind of cross between Jar Jar Binks and Peter Lorre. Stick to the print version of this one!!
In terms of literary merit, I think now Ghosh will never surpass The Shadow Lines, but it's not because he's not capable of doing it. I think he's not interested any more. And in that sense, for all the weak/puppet characterization, I cannot take a star away from this monumental book. This is one of the finest Indian books to come out in a long long time. The breadth is tremendous -- making The Glass House looks like a term paper. And just as you keep down the book (it's quite a fast read, for all its complexity -- indeed a reads like a thriller, and the parallel I can think of is The Name of the Rose), you would want to know when's the next part of the trilogy coming up.
The book is self-contained, don't worry. But it's easy to imagine why Ghosh cannot say that's it. That he'd want to go on, and keep on telling the story of these characters.
Couldn't have asked for a better beginning of my vacation!
The book is self-contained, don't worry. But it's easy to imagine why Ghosh cannot say that's it. That he'd want to go on, and keep on telling the story of these characters.
Couldn't have asked for a better beginning of my vacation!
Thoroughly enjoyed this historical tale which pitches and rolls like the schooner Ibis in the story.
In the late 1970's, I worked for a company which was taken over by Jardine Matheson. I well recall one of their top management telling us "we used to be opium smugglers, but we're respectable now....".
Well, Mr. Ghosh gives us chapter & verse on the Indian side of that trade where the opium was produced under the monopoly of the British East India Company. His descriptions of the poppy farmers and the conditions at the opium factory at Ghazipur are both evocative and disturbing.
Incidentally, this factory still exists, hopefully after numerous visits from Health & Safety, and is today the world's largest legal producer of opium. It is still, however, plagued by hordes of soporific, addicted monkeys, who can be moved around by swinging them by their tails.
Deserves 4.5 stars and I can't wait to read the rest of this trilogy.
In the late 1970's, I worked for a company which was taken over by Jardine Matheson. I well recall one of their top management telling us "we used to be opium smugglers, but we're respectable now....".
Well, Mr. Ghosh gives us chapter & verse on the Indian side of that trade where the opium was produced under the monopoly of the British East India Company. His descriptions of the poppy farmers and the conditions at the opium factory at Ghazipur are both evocative and disturbing.
Incidentally, this factory still exists, hopefully after numerous visits from Health & Safety, and is today the world's largest legal producer of opium. It is still, however, plagued by hordes of soporific, addicted monkeys, who can be moved around by swinging them by their tails.
Deserves 4.5 stars and I can't wait to read the rest of this trilogy.
This is the first book of the Ibis trilogy.
The story tells the saga of Ibis when traveling from America to India.
The saga of several characters are entwined in the plot, such as Deetie, a widow of a opium factory worker; Paulette, the daughter of a French botanist; Baboo Nob Kissin, a company's accountant.
It took me a while until I managed to fix the narrative's development due to the many existing of idiolects even if the author provided an extensive Chrestomathy by the end of the book.
The next volume of this trilogy is The River of Smoke.
The story tells the saga of Ibis when traveling from America to India.
The saga of several characters are entwined in the plot, such as Deetie, a widow of a opium factory worker; Paulette, the daughter of a French botanist; Baboo Nob Kissin, a company's accountant.
It took me a while until I managed to fix the narrative's development due to the many existing of idiolects even if the author provided an extensive Chrestomathy by the end of the book.
The next volume of this trilogy is The River of Smoke.