Customer Reviews

The Impressionist

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Hari Kunzru's "The Impressionist" is one of the most promising debuts to have been published this last year and yes, the novel is excellent, though not nearly as assured or accomplished as the hype would have us believe. The premise of the novel is certainly interesting and an ideal vehicle for Kunzru to explore issues of race, culture and identity in an ironic tongue-in-cheek manner through the life of one half-caste, Pran Nath. From the moment he was conceived, Pran needed only nature's endowment, the instinct to survive. Born into a wealthy Indian family, our pampered hero finds himself unceremoniously dumped into the streets one day when his true paternity comes to light. Kidnapped by pimps, he is forced into prostitution, servicing a bent colonialist until his incredible escape into the shelter of a half-demented Scottish missionary and his native friendly wife. But that's only half the story. When fate presents the opportunity for a total makeover, the light skinned Pran seizes it, acquiring the false identity of a young Englishman and before we know it, he finds himself "back" in England living on trust money and the life of an Oxford undergraduate, chasing after an airhead. After many more twists and turns, our young protagonist lands up in Africa.

As we witness Pran's multiple transformation, we come face to face with the realization that perhaps, just perhaps there's no real person underneath the skin and bone. Watching this beautiful butterfly morph into a moth and back again is like watching a snake shedding its skin, an ongoing process powered by nature and instinct. While "The Impressionist" is undoubtedly an impressive and intriguing novel, Kunzru may have overreached himself and the minisaga pays the price of being overwritten. In my opinion, the author seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. Apart from his tendency towards bombastic vocabulary and his occasionally awkward sentence construction, the novel also suffers from eclectic characterisation and a slightly unsteady tone. The madcap resolution in the forest between the Nawab's retinue and the colonialists dissolves into camp and farce, like a scene from "A Midsummers Night Dream". Major Privett-Clamp and his wife Charlie are cartoon characters to laugh at. The MacFarlanes are eccentrics, though I suspect I've met the demented missionary before in Matthew Kneale's "English Passengers". Star, the heartless bimbo and object of Pran's desire, is clearly the English cousin of Daisy Buchanan (from Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby") from across the Atlantic. But most disappointing of all are the final chapters in Africa. Turgidly written, obscure and confusing, they are a terrible letdown.

That said, don't let the overhype surrounding "The Impressionist" put you off. It may not be the realised masterpiece critics claim it is, but it is definitely worth your time reading it. Despite its poor ending, I enjoyed it immensely.

The first thing anyone notices about Hari Kunzru's debut novel, "The Impressionist," is that it certainly is different.

To begin with, the protagonist, Pran Nath Razdan, was conceived in a cave during the first monsoon of the year 1903, the son of an indulged Indian girl, Amrita, and a silent British forestry specialist. Although Amrita died in childbirth, a maid reveals Pran Nath's true parentage when he is but 15 years old. Consequently, he is thrown out of the luxurious home of his wealthy Kashmiri "father" and grows up alone, inventing and reinventing himself and his life as he chooses.

Pran Nath had the luck, or the misfortune (it all depends on the way in which one looks at the situation), to be born with the fair skin of his English father. While this makes him an outcast in India, it does allow him to reinvent himself as a totally Caucasian man...when the occasion calls for it.

Neither brown nor white, Pran Nath really can't decide what, or even who, he really is. To say that his "sense of self" is seriously underdeveloped is a serious understatement. Pran Nath will be anything to anyone and he takes pride in his ability to do so.

Pran Nath, of course, comes off as a very superficial character. I don't see how we could perceive him in any other way. The man has no essence, no core, his personality, indeed, his very identity is as fluid as the water in a backyard birdbath. This is not to say that Pran Nath is cardboard cutout of a character. He's not. He's something beyond that. He's almost invisible or the ultimate shapeshifter, perhaps.

Pran Nath, as a homeless teenager, spends time in a brothel (where he's known as "Rukhsana"), then finds employment in the home of the demented Nawab of Fatehpur (where he's known as "Clive"). With blackmail and cross-dressing as their focus, these sections of the book read more like a farce than anything else and are probably it's weakest links.

Once Pran Nath realizes that he can make others believe he is 100% white, he escapes to Bombay, becomes the foster son of a Scottish missionary and his wife, the Macfarlanes, who christen Pran Nath, "Robert." Life with the Macfarlanes leaves something to be desired, however, and so "Robert" also spends time in the Bombay underworld as "Pretty Bobby." This section of the book is wonderful, and the Macfarlane's back story is simply superb, one of the best set pieces I've read in a long time. Had the entire book been as wonderfully good as this section, I would certainly have given it five stars rather than four.

Shapeshifters aren't known for their stability and neither is Pran Nath. He is also smart enough to find passage out of India when political turmoil begins to tear the country apart at the seams. For reasons I won't reveal, Pran Nath "becomes" Jonathan Bridgeman and finds himself bound for England...Oxford, to be precise. There, he becomes, of course, no less than the hysterically funny, prototypical, ultra-conservative Englishman. And, to put it mildly...things happen. It is as "Jonathan Bridgeman" that Pran Nath meets and falls madly in love with Astarte Chapel, the lovely daughter of an Oxford professor who convinces "Jonathan" to accompany him on a trip to tribal Africa.

The African chapters, like the back story of the Scottish Macfarlanes, are probably the very best in the book. It is in Africa that Pran Nath comes face to face with his destiny and it is here that this book's elaborate joke is finally revealed.

This book is, of course, quite episodic, and some episodes have much more power than others. While the "Scottish" and "African" sections shine with brilliance and originality, the "Indian" and "English" ones can, at times, be a little heavy-handed. Both the book's social statement and its satire could have used a lighter touch.

The characters, for the most part, are wonderful, fully fleshed-out and quite believable, except for Pran Nath, of course. And what of Pran Nath? What are we to make of him? Is he a hero or an anti-hero? I think he's both. He's an opportunist, certainly, but only because he is forced to live as one.

"The Impressionist" is almost too much of a good thing and the book might suffer just a little because of that. Kunzru, after all, needs to save something special for his second book.

Despite a few shortcomings and some unevenness, this is a marvelous book and a marvelously entertaining one. But, although it may sound funny and comic, it is not a lighthearted, fun read. This is heady stuff, for, at the bottom of it all, "The Impressionist" explores such "heavy" topics as what it means to be black or white or brown or red; what it means to be Indian or English or Scottish or man or woman or tribal warrior. In essence, what it means to be human.

This sprawling debut novel ambitiously attempts to combine satire and farce with questions of identity, class, race, culture and heritage in the symbol-laden Dickensian story of an Anglo-Indian boy born just after the turn of the century in British India. Pran is conceived in the midst of a Biblical flood and spends the early years of his life living the spoiled luxurious life of a wealthy child. When he is cast out as a young teenager, he is forced to adapt to circumstances in order to survive- a pattern that will define his life. Throughout the book Pran has no point of view of his own, and grows up learning how to copy the speech, mannerisms, and beliefs of others. It's an interesting idea, but ultimately one that undermines the narrative, since the result is an essentially a soulless creation who has no depth.

Through his semi-picaresque adventures, Pran does manage to occasionally engender some sympathy, especially when he is tricked and drugged into sexual slavery. However, Kunzru holds back a bit here, preferring to "draw the veil" over Pran's several rapes, rather than exposing the true horror of the experience, and so a distance is maintained. Pran then lands in the grasp of a self-loathing British Major with a prediction for young boys (a rather stereotyped character), who begins the process of Pran's transformation into a proper British schoolboy. Next he pops up in Bombay's red-light district of Falkland Road as an assistant to the preacher at the Independent Scottish Mission Among the Heathen. This is perhaps the strongest portion of the book, with evocative descriptions of street life and the unhappy Scottish missionary couple he lives with. As the anti-colonial movement grows more active, Pran is presented with a golden opportunity to escape to England.

The last third of the book concerns Pran's adventures in England, where he is constantly on thin ice as he tries to pass as English while at Oxford. Here, the book trods rather familiar paths in its satirical savagings of the British elite and notions of class and empire. The book's density overwhelms in this section, as Kunzru crams in a subplot about Pran's Jewish roommate, anti-Semitic riots in London, and his obviously doomed romance with an English girl. The final chapters, in which he travels to Africa on an anthropological expedition and stares into the face of colonial expansion, while an appropriate ending, are far too indebted to Conrad to be considered original.

Ultimately, the book rambles about fairly satisfactorily in attempting to wrestle with notions of identity. If nothing else, it sheds light on the discrimination suffered by mixed race children of the British Empire, who were often rejected by both sides. Pran's ultimate goal is to be accepted as British, but once that occurs, he's not sure what to do next, or even why he was striving for that in the first place. The problem with the book is that the reader recognizes this flaw in his quest from the beginning, and therefore the journey has to be pretty entertaining to keep one reading to the inexorable conclusion. Kunzru partially accomplishes this, often through digressions into history, science, and biographies of minor characters. These are all quite interesting in and of themselves, however the book does tend to bog down at times as a result of overwriting.

Sometimes surreal, always fascinating, British journalist Hari Kunzru's first novel is a masterful and imaginative tale of one who can transform himself to suit situation and desire. Mr. Kunzru provides an arresting reading of this nonpareil adventure.

Although he is the child of an Englishman, Pran Nath Razdan, is presented by his mother as the offspring of her wealthy Indian husband. It is the early 1900s, and the boy is raised with every advantage. However, in his early teens, Pran's real father is discovered by the affluent man, and the boy is thrown into the streets to fare as best he can.

His sanctuary is a brothel where he is dressed in women's clothes and offered as such. Later, for the satisfaction of a deviant military man he transforms himself into perfection incarnate in the guise of an English schoolboy. Following his escape to Bombay he adopts a double life as the compliant son of a missionary couple, and as an errand boy for the prostitutes of the city.

Pran has learned his lessons well - he knows how to reinvent himself in order to survive, and later learns that these same transformations can be used for his baser, more selfish desires.

With a story that ranges throughout the globe, Kunzru takes readers on an unforgettable journey through distant locales while examining our awareness of what is perceived and what is real.

- Gail Cooke

I really enjoyed this, my first novel by Kunzru, about a young Anglo-Indian boy growing up in a very skin color-conscious British India. When he is kicked out of his uncle's house for his origins, Pran wanders the street and ends up in a variety of situations that take him across the globe.

The writing style was a bit overly-descriptive and enigmatic for my tastes, but Hari Kunzru is absolutely a gifted writer. He has a real talent for poetic prose, and I would be interested in reading some of his Wired articles and anything he wrote as a travel writer. I recommend this book to anyone that enjoys good writing and a tale that could easily be based on reality. The story reminds me of that of Queenie, Michael Korda's retelling of his great-grandmother's experiences in India and abroad as an Anglo-Indian passing herself off as white.

I saw some complaints about the ending, but I felt it was appropriate to the story, although it might not have been decisive enough for many readers. This was a very interesting book - I'm glad I read it.

In a tale that winds through the exotic world of Post WWI India to the sacred halls of English education, a young man, who starts his life as Pran, begins the challenge of adaptation, chameleon-like, in a quest for survival. There is a hint of the spoiled, self-centered individual Pran is, before his rude awakening. When Pran's true half-Anglo parentage is revealed, the formerly princely boy is tossed into the maw of the city, quickly devoured by human predators. Vulnerable in his unusual beauty, Pran has no experience in the art of self-protection and soon falls victim. Absorbed into a low class brothel, he is sexually abused and beaten daily, drugged into a stupor that melts one day into another.

Purchased for the harem of the Nawab of Fatepur, Pran becomes an unfortunate pawn in a power struggle for the fate of Fatepur in the hands of British colonial rule. Pran/Rukhsama enters the palace disguised as a female, ultimately residing with the court hijras (eunuchs) who intend to offer him as Clive, an English schoolboy, in an absurd attempt to blackmail a British officer. In a mix of nefarious plots and idiosyncratic dignitaries, Rukhsana/Clive escapes and is taken in by Scottish missionaries. There, as Chandra/Pretty Bobby, the young man molds himself to fit his surroundings, changing personalities to accommodate a variety of situations. He is adept at mirroring those around him, stepping in and out as necessary. Political tensions increase as British rule prepares to collapse. In a last daring sleight-of-identity, Chandra/Bobby becomes a young English student bound for Oxford, England, when the real boy is murdered at the hands of a hysterical mob.

In taking on the persona of Johnathan Bridgeman, the protagonist seems to accomplish the impossible, the privileged life of an English gentleman of reasonable income, with a promising future. After years of posing, adjusting and adapting, Johnathan falls prey to the unexpected: he falls in love. The object of his sophomoric pining is a young woman who toys with men's attentions, simply because it pleases her. Unfortunately for Johnathan, he has no ability to contend with this situation, and cannot fasten upon a personality that will win her sustained attentions. Desperate, he forges an interest in anthropology in order to remain close to her professor father. Joining the professor on his African expedition to study a remaining tribe of "unspoiled" natives, Johnathan is swept from the safe shores of England back to the bowels of the darkest continent, where he comes face to face with the knowledge that he has himself become a cipher. As the jungle swallows the English expedition, the young man finally releases himself from any expectations, cloaked in anonymity, and learns to live the journey, rather than the destination.

The writing flows from one bizarre incarnation to another, each peppered with absurdity. The protagonist leaps from one identity to the next, honing his skills, his nascent ability to impersonate. Reading the novel, it is tempting to pass over the great sadness that permeates every phase of Pran's life. He has virtually no identity, not Pran, nor Rukhsana, Clive, Chandra/Pretty Bobby or Johnathan. Becoming everyman, he is no man, until he ceases his flight, where nothing from the past is worth keeping. While the language is fluid and well-paced, the author's feat is impressive, his ingenuity stunning in its realization.

This book had received substanial hype...anyone who is into keeping up with contemporary fiction (I hesitate to say 'better' literature) in other words, someone who avoids the best seller lists, the more "popular" books,...etc. had learned of Kunzru's huge advance and read of his background as a DJ, writer, etc ....so I was more than mildly curious to read it and I was absolutely caught up in this wonderfully imaginative story of Pran....and his magnificent and fascinating journey...I won't go into the story .......
I think what makes this book so good are the supporting characters --the people that Pran meets along the way and their impact on his life and development. A thoroughly enjoyabe read -- I highly recommend this book to anyone with an imagination and a good sense of humor.The book is delightfully droll ( the touch of British and perhaps Asian Indian irony are very evident) and the pages turn aas quicly as if you were viewing a film.....

The theme is familiar but rarely has it been expressed so hauntingly as it is here; and hardly ever has it been explored so completely by a first time writer. Ethnic identity kindled in the heat of miscegenation is beyond love or passion; it tugs at the very essence of who we say we are as individuals and how we claim our nationalities. Add to that mix a colonial setting with issues of wealth and privilege set against powerlessness and self doubt and you've got a rich tableau of human emotion from which to craft your novel and develop characters. This story is set in early 20th century colonial India. That and the central character Pran being the child of an English father and Indian mother immediately creates the setting for exploring the big question of "who am I?" This is the theme of much of V.S. Naipual's writing such as the MIMIC MEN.

There is no need for Pran to mimic anyone at least not for the first 15 years of his life. He is brought up by a Kashmiri lawyer who takes him as his own son. "His father will not hear a word spoken against him...when his aunties come visit, they pinch his cheeks and coo...Pran Nath, so beautiful! So pale! Such a perfect Kashmiri!". Pran's mother died with her secrets in childbirth and his real father - Englishman Ronald Forrester - is also long gone having died the night Pran was conceived. Pran is therefore not a perfect Kashmiri and this is eventually revealed to his lawyer father who promptly throws the youth out onto the streets.

Pran falls into the hands of a eunuch who pimps him out to Major Privett-Clampe a bizarre colonial character. No longer Pran the boy is now Clive. We see the beginnings of the chameleon. At first changes are for survival but soon he is learning, adapting, realizing that by being different people according to others needs he can achieve what he wants. Identity becomes a tool Pran uses with great skill in social climbing. We next meet him in Bombay where he has become Robert, the foster-child of Scottish missionaries. This is only his day time persona because at night he's back on the streets as Pretty Bobby. Still another reincarnation takes place and now we see THE IMPRESSIONIST emerging and developing to his full potential.

He stumbles upon a passport and ticket to London. They belonged to an orphaned heir named Jonathan Bridgeman who was killed in a Bombay back alley. No longer satisfied with mimicking those around him, the impressionist assumes Bridgeman's identity and returns to England and Oxford. It's no coincidence that the author has him studying anthropology because he has become something of a curiosity himself. He says to himself "how easy it is to slough off one life and take up another". Perhaps if he had heeded the implicit warning in his own thoughts he would have realized that a fluid identity is also no identity whatsoever. When Pran falls in love and realizes that his real Indian identity is appropriate for this situation it is too far gone and he can't recover.

Like both Naipaul and Waugh before him Kunzru writes a subtle satire. Also like Naipaul he is able to plumb the depths with the tragic elements that oftentimes envelopes the subject of ethnic identity. Kunzru wouldn't have been true to those others if in the end he neatly resolved the identity issue. Such matters have a long history and an interminable future.

With so many fine novels written during the past decade about the Indian emigrant experience, is there anything new to say on the topic? Hari Kunzru's picaresque tale of an Anglo-Indian boy answers, resoundingly, yes.

Pran Nath is the fruit of an improbable union between an Indian girl and a soldier of the British Empire who are literally thrown together during a flash flood. The soldier dies, and the girl travels onward to Agra and her arranged marriage. There she convinces her unworldly husband that the child in her swelling belly is his own. Pran's mother dies giving birth, and her unsuspecting husband raises Pran as his prized son and heir. Pran's life as a spoiled, upper class youth comes to an abrupt end when he's betrayed by a servant who knows the true tale of his patrimony.

Tossed into the streets, Pran suffers the usual depredations visited upon defenseless urchins. After some months as a captive child prostitute, he's sold out of a brothel into the service of a minor maharajah. Pran's new job is to seduce a British colonial administrator with a taste for young boys so the maharajah can blackmail him. The political and erotic byplay builds to a hilarious climax involving magic potions, drugged tigers, and miscegenation.

The inclusion of "child prostitute" and "hilarious" in the description above hints at the story's accomplishments and limitations. We're captivated by Pran's adventures, but he's more comic book hero than fully fleshed out character. Suspend disbelief, and you'll enjoy the ride. Look elsewhere for more literal emotional truths.

Pran escapes to Bombay, where he's given bed and board by Scottish missionaries. While the colonial edifice in India starts to shudder and crack, Pran shuttles between high minded Protestantism and the brothels of Falkland Road, where he makes a skimpy living as an errand boy and low level pimp. He also takes tentative steps to pass himself off as an Englishman, using his light skin as the ticket out of his Indian self. One evening, Pran serves as night guide to a drunken English youth, raised in India but now orphaned and returning to England. When the English boy gets murdered during a political riot, Pran takes his clothes and his identity and sets sail for the land of his father.

Passing as Jonathan Bridgeman, Pran is provided with a comfortable inheritance and sent first to a boarding school, then to Oxford. Pran becomes an actor and an aesthete, but his real course of study is English customs and manners, which he mimics and dissects in order to discover the wellsprings of British imperial power. While at Oxford, he begins a romance with Astarte Chapel, the daughter of a famous anthropologist. Astarte is the peaches and cream essence of Anglo-Saxon girlhood, and the smitten Pran feels he's sailing toward the very fountainhead of Englishness. But then he discovers that Astarte's tastes run darker and wilder than the prim and proper Englishman Pran's worked so hard to become.

Pran flees to Africa with Astarte's father to study a remote jungle tribe. After an arduous upriver journey, the expedition finds that the long arm of empire has been here before them and upended the tribe's culture. Now truly in the heart of darkness, Pran has to come to terms with the deteriorating situation in the bush and his own wobbly sense of who he really is.

The Impressionist is a remarkably assured first novel. It's a sensual book, not because of the too numerous sexual escapades, but in the rich descriptions of clothes, palaces, brothels and city streets and in the striking and humorous oddities of British and Indian culture seen through Pran's boyish eyes. Echoes of great English writers such as Waugh, Forster, Dickens, and Conrad give the book texture. All the Big Ideas about race, class and identity evolve naturally out of the story. This is a wise, funny, and inventive novel. We can only hope the multi-talented Kunzru will continue working in this particular medium.

Kunzru's debut is remarkable in many ways: his prose is rich in color and description, every setting his describes - whether it be a flood-ravaged plain in India, the slums of Bombay, the streets of Oxford, or the deserts of Africa - come sensuously alive, and the plot keeps the reader eagerly turning pages even if at times it becomes a little implausible. The book's protagonist, Pranath, resembles an Anglo-Indian version of Patricia Highsmith's "Talented Mr. Ripley" in his seemingly effortless ability to morph from one persona to another, all the while serving the author's intent of reflecting upon the ambiguities of British colonialism in India, Africa, and England itself.

I found Kunzru's prose better served the conveying of setting and local color than providing a basis for three-dimensional characters. Pranath still remains somewhat unknowable at the end of 300 pages and the supporting cast, while colorful and richly drawn in their own right, never quite connects with the reader on an emotional level.

Still, this is an exciting debut and one well worth reading.