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A review by adityadabral
The Book of Chocolate Saints by Jeet Thayil
2.0
This book is all over the place. When it comes to narrative voices, timescales and locations, The Book of Chocolate Saints happily shifts through all of this with some frequency. At times it's elucidating and interesting, so I do appreciate the ambition to be a little unconventional but by the end I grew weary of hearing about the escapades of a wayward and frankly ridiculous main character. I get that he's at the end of his tether creatively and he's not meant to be endearing, but if you're going to write a book, the reader needs to develop an attachment to something. I couldn't even muster up pity or any meaningful emotion for the main character.
Speaking of which, the story follows the life of Newton Francis Xavier, an aging poet/painter preparing for a final celebration of his work in New Delhi. We get to see his inner circle of confidantes and in particular the strange Dismas Bambai, a man who drops his journalistic exploits to write a biography of Xavier, something which features heavily in the book through the format of interviews. Other interesting people in the ensemble of characters Thayil concocts include a religious con-artist, a neurotic editor and a stalker driving around in a van. That was something I did like about the book. There are many characters with the potential be compelling, but I never felt that quite came to fruition.
There are parts of the book which explored certain plot-lines in excess (take Amrik's soul searching in Arizona and his subsequent irrelevance to the story) and more intriguing questions (Newton's upbringing and relationships) which are touched upon but still seem cursory and sparse. Much is also made of the real literary movements that our fictitious protagonist has been involved in such as the Bombay Poets and the Hung Realists and while I did like these historical interludes, they ultimately were so long that calling it that won't suffice. Parts of the book felt like mere recitations of the past which were just dry.
Jeet Thayil can certainly write. At times the imagery he creates is mesmerising and vivid, but this seems to be too rare, and the irritatingly haphazard qualities of this book are simply too great to be overlooked.
Speaking of which, the story follows the life of Newton Francis Xavier, an aging poet/painter preparing for a final celebration of his work in New Delhi. We get to see his inner circle of confidantes and in particular the strange Dismas Bambai, a man who drops his journalistic exploits to write a biography of Xavier, something which features heavily in the book through the format of interviews. Other interesting people in the ensemble of characters Thayil concocts include a religious con-artist, a neurotic editor and a stalker driving around in a van. That was something I did like about the book. There are many characters with the potential be compelling, but I never felt that quite came to fruition.
There are parts of the book which explored certain plot-lines in excess (take Amrik's soul searching in Arizona and his subsequent irrelevance to the story) and more intriguing questions (Newton's upbringing and relationships) which are touched upon but still seem cursory and sparse. Much is also made of the real literary movements that our fictitious protagonist has been involved in such as the Bombay Poets and the Hung Realists and while I did like these historical interludes, they ultimately were so long that calling it that won't suffice. Parts of the book felt like mere recitations of the past which were just dry.
Jeet Thayil can certainly write. At times the imagery he creates is mesmerising and vivid, but this seems to be too rare, and the irritatingly haphazard qualities of this book are simply too great to be overlooked.