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79 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant, mesmerizing book, November 30, 2008
This review is from: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Hardcover)
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It is impossible to say enough about these subtle, deep, painful stories which remind me of Chekhov. In all the tales, revolving somehow around a very rich Pakistani landowner and his family, the poet Burn's line "man's inhumanity to man" kept echoing in my mind. I was enthralled by the unique vision and skill of the writer and at the same time truly depressed by the stories. The rich see nothing outside themselves but for brief moments; they have little joy and the poor are less than chattel to them. The poor or those fallen from prosperity cluster about them, hanging on to their feet for dear life, and inevitably falling away. If love begins to blossom in these stories, it will fail by one partner's flawed nature or parents' manipulative intervention. If any character has a sweet or generous nature, he or she is totally extinguished. Women fare the worse, being kept as mistresses until the man dies and then losing everything.
What a picture it paints of a feudal society though throughout the classes! Nawabdin the electrician can fix any machine with mango sap and makeshift wiring until it soon breaks again; he married, early in his life, "a sweet woman of unsurpassed fertility" who gave him twelve daughters for whom he must find dowries by turning his hand to dozens of little businesses until a thief in even more desperate condition tries to kill him for his motorcycle. Lily, a woman in her 30s who is weary of a life of loose sex and wild parties, vows to change into a model farmer's wife when she marries the decent son of a rich landowner. She discovers once married that "I'm not the type to be dutiful. I'm messy and willful and self-destructive." (The paragraph which ends this story is so brilliant I read it three times.) And the last story with the character I loved the best, "a small, bowlegged man with a lopsided face," a dirt-poor peasant so devoted to the garden which a rich woman hires him to tend that he lovingly buys grape vines with his own money. For these characters and many more, the author sings a sonorous lament with his prose.
A very sad book, but wonderfully written, just wonderfully.
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gem - even if you're not a big fan of short stories, you'll love this, December 8, 2008
This review is from: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Hardcover)
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This terrific book is made up of short stories that are linked, and you see some of the same characters at different points in time and place. It's not that easy to do, but Mueensuddin pulls it off perfectly, and you get to know each character in almost a Rashamon way - through their own eyes and through those of others. If you think that you really dislike or favor someone, just wait. You may think differently later on.
These stories have locations in common too, and the majority of the book takes place near Lahore, on the farmlands of a wealthy Pakistani family. We are shown what life is like for the poor, and for the rich. We become acquainted with landowners, and the workers and servants, and how bad luck or one bad decision can result in catastrophe. Success and happiness in life often depends on the circumstances of one's birth, and the reader gets a lesson about Pakistani culture, and its harshness, its dependence on knowing the right people, and its fatalism. And throw luck into the mix. And because the stories take place at different times, we see how modernization has affected Pakistan - and how some things remain the same.
If you were a fan of A Fine Balance (one of my favorite books), or The God of Small Things, I can *guarantee* that you will love this book. Like those great novels, this one can be both heartbreaking and funny, and many times you will be smiling at some amusing passage only to be devastated by the next.
One other thing to add - I am not, in general, a big fan of short stories. If you feel this way too, do not be put off by the fact this is a book of stories. Both because the book is so well-written, and because the stories share commonality of characters and place, it reads like a novel.
So, highly, highly recommended. This is going down as one of my top reads of the year. It's that good. (And you'll be hooked from page one - another big plus.)
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40 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Substantial potential, mostly good storytelling, sometimes less than satisfying, January 8, 2009
This review is from: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Hardcover)
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Mueenuddin weaves a series of short stories around a wealthy Pakistani land-owning family of the old order, and the retainers, servants and heirs whose lives are centered around them. The stories take place during and following the sweeping social changes of the 20th century.
At his best, Mueenuddin narrates artfully on grand themes of fidelity and obsession while commenting on rampant corruption and substantial inequality in the patronage-based Pakistani class system. At times the prose borders on beautiful, telling enough details to picture, but not so many to slow the progression.
Several of his characters are profoundly likeable. The banter of the eponymous "Lily" made me think of a naughtier Audrey Hepburn sparring with herself as Princess Anne, and the choices of a young Sohail made me reflect upon the gravity of choices made while we are young. Such emotional proximity makes the tragedies painful, with victories scarce to come by and often at heavy price.
The stories are often so melancholy as to be cathartic. Lamentably, Mueenuddin sometimes loses the cathartic balance and tilts towards nihilism. His wealthy characters are often bored, their impoverished servants often desperate. Perhaps this is a resolute message, that the class system fails both so unutterably, choking the freedom of the individual for the sake of perpetuating itself, and yet rich and poor alike cling to fatalistic destiny without knowing of another way to live.
At times even the purpose of the stories seem to get lost, and I found myself asking "Daniyal, are you trying to tell me something important, or is this merely a nostalgiac vignette?" The connective tissue is not always clear between the many rooms of Mueenuddin's house of wonders, other than some association with the central family.
There were some endings that left me less than satisfied. After building his stories, his interdependent characters, to a profound and crushing climax, too often his denoument simply collapses into a two-sentence finale. Perhaps he wishes to show the tragedy intrinsic to servants' losing all importance once they leave the master's house, but it feels unfair to let my empathy with these poor tragic persons simply fade like tears in the rain.
Likewise, conversations sometimes resolve themselves. In "The Lady of Paris", a life choice is made in the briefest unspoken part of a conversation, between the questions of a future and the small talk that follows a resolution obvious only to the two conversants. The choice remains a secret until several stories later.
It is clear from this work that Mueenuddin has writing in his bones.
I gave three stars for an enjoyable, though sometimes frustrating, read, and hope to give four to his next set of short stories.
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