Customer Reviews

Journey To Ithaca

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Desai is a writer who repays re-reading. This book is subtle and textured. The author plays marvelously with time and consciousness in ways reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, brought up to date.

I did not find this book interesting. I had to struggle to finish it. What distinguishes Anita Desai's work is her vivid and beautiful description of nature. The second half where Sophie goes on a journey to discover the roots of 'Mataji' does not connect well with the readers. A lot of time the book was very boring and going nowhere in the name of spirituality. I read this novel with great anticipation as I liked Desai's 'Clear Light of The Day' very much. If you are expecting something like that then this novel will come as an disppointment.

This was the first book of Desai's that I'd read; at first, it seemed a little dull, but as I got into the rhythm of its storytelling (gradual, gentle) I found it more and more compelling, and by the end, I loved it. The style is simple and naturalistic (places, societies and individuals all beautifully observed), and yet nothing is presented with a clear black-and-white moral meaning -- or if it is, something else will soon contradict it. But at the end, a picture has been painted, something meaningful has been set out -- something about love, the conflicts between different kinds of love, and perhaps about what it can mean to go on a pilgrimage.

Matteo and Caroline were both brought up in Italy. Caroline was sent to a convent school in Milan and Matteo to a school in Turin which had been recommended by his uncle. However Matteo performed very poorly: he was bad at maths, could not sing and played football in a disastrous way so that he was constantly bullied by his classmates. Finally his parents decided to take him back home and they found a tutor, Fabian, for his education. But he remained a rebellious student, learning nothing, eating nothing. Whenever his father talked to him about a career in banking or in the family silk business, Matteo would simply smile faintly. Finally in the summer of 1975, he married Sophie, the daughter of a German banker and together they left for India taking with them Matteo's much beloved copy of Hermann Hesse's "The Journey to the East".
In Bombay they met Pierre Eduard who took them to an elderly woman who performed a few tricks as a form of worship to the glory of Shiva. Whilst Sophie remained unimpressed with what she called "party tricks", Matteo on the other hand was quite transfixed by what he had seen. Later they met Mr Pandey, a "deus ex machina" as Sophie called him in her exasperation, who suggested that they go and live in an ashram. After that Matteo came up with the idea that they replicate the journey which a famous saint had undertaken on foot to a shrine where he obtained enlightenment. But Sophie could not share Matteo's enthusiasm about searching for "the mystery that is the heart of India" during the exhausting expedition and even after such a short time spent in the country, she had no doubt that it was a culture to which she would never belong. Matteo on the other hand was literally seized by madness with his quest for the "devine light" despite the warnings that "the gods are destructive in this country". Will Matteo's studying with a swami at a distant ashram help him recover his senses? Will Matteo and Sophie go through this adventure together and recover their love?
Mrs Desai shows hard and driven people in her novel, the mutual contempt of a wife and a husband, the rejection foreigners may experience in India and also a man deluding himself in an impossible quest. Perhaps the author's other novels like "Baumgartner's Bombay" or "In Custody" are more accessible, less obscure.

Matteo and Sophie travel to India where he searches for spiritual enlightenment while she sulks in boredom and disdain. Desai does a remarkable job of capturing the spirit of the seeker, the hypocrisy of those who prey upon them, the disappointment and destruction that seeking can bring, the relief of finding one's true teacher, and the escstasy of meeting god. A truly rich, beautiful, and compelling story that makes the reader loathe to put the book down. If Desai's other novels are on par with this one (and I intend to find out), her books will be filling my shelves.

This is one of the worse books I have ever plodded through. I can't believe I actually finished it. It is full of rambling prose, and uninteresting characters, in a very boring, uneventful plot. Why would anyone want to write such a book? What is the point? Matteo and Sophie aren't very deep people, and the bit about the Mother was so uninteresting. It wasn't even worthy of one star and is in such contrast to books by the same author, that have a soul. Why would anyone want to write about this kind of indulgent, boring uninteresting people, even though I know their type exist? They aren't worthy to be characters in any literature.

This is one of the worse books I have ever plodded through. I can't believe I actually finished it. It is full of rambling prose, and uninteresting characters, in a very boring, uneventful plot. Why would anyone want to write such a book? What is the point? Matteo and Sophie aren't very deep people, and the bit about the Mother was so uninteresting. It wasn't even worthy of one star and is in such contrast to books by the same author, that have a soul. Why would anyone want to write about this kind of indulgent, boring uninteresting people, even though I know their type exists. They aren't worthy to be characters in any literature.