The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2013 12:48 AM PST The Conductor THERE are some events in history that are so large in scale, so awful in their human cost and so unimaginable in the extent of the suffering they cause, that they pose the novelist with formidable problems just by the enormity of their subject matter. The Siege of Leningrad, or St Petersburg as it may be better known, is such a case. A city of some three million people, it was subject to one of the most brutal sieges of all time during World War II. The siege had one objective: to break the resistance of the people of Leningrad and to destroy the city forever. According to an article on the siege in The Observer in 2001, "The Führer (Adolph Hitler) said publicly and in leaflets dropped on the city that in order to avoid obliteration, Leningrad must surrender. Secretly, however, he ordered his commander in the east, Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb, to refuse the city's capitulation and obliterate its citizenry, whatever happened. In a directive headed 'The Future of the City of St Petersburg', the Nazi general Walter Warlimont wrote: 'The Führer has decided to raze the city of St Petersburg from the face of the earth. After the defeat of Soviet Russia there will be not the slightest reason for the future existence of this large city.'" The siege lasted 872 days at the cost of one and a half million lives, with a similar number evacuated, many of whom also died. By the time the siege ended, the remaining population had all but starved to death, surviving on minuscule rations of sawdust-impregnated bread and any birds or rats that remained. Temperatures were as low as -30°C. The failure of the Nazis to take Leningrad was a pivotal event of WWII's European theatre. Rather than tackle the full enormity of these events, although they are very convincingly ever-present in the background, Sarah Quigley opts for a more domestic and positive story. One of Leningrad's most important inhabitants was the composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), already recognised as a major, if controversial, musical figure of the time. Regarded as far too important to be a casualty of the siege, he was eventually, and initially rather against his will, evacuated to Kuibyshev where he finished the final movements of his seventh symphony, now known as the "Leningrad". It was ready for a public performance. There were, however, very few people left alive in Leningrad to play it. Quigley's choice of this moment is an inspired one. Her novel is not short of descriptions of the terrible conditions that people lived in or of the heartbreak involved in the breakup of families that evacuation often entailed. But The Conductor is the story of the musical genius of Shostakovich and the persistence, bravery and dogged determination of Karl Eliasberg, conductor of Leningrad's then second-tier (and possibly second-rate) Radio Orchestra. Moments of heroism do not come much odder than Eliasberg and his musicians struggling to perform and broadcast the Leningrad symphony as a gesture of defiance against the besieging army and as a means of raising the spirits of the city's remaining inhabitants. For much of the novel, Eliasberg is the focus. He is not, initially, a particularly appealing character. "I was born without a heart," he says at the book's opening. It is the fate of a leader, a conductor, to have to stand apart from the people he leads, in this case musicians. But however much they may resent his insistence on punctuality, his criticism of parts played wrongly, his brutal denial of rations on disciplinary grounds, the musicians who make up his raggle-taggle orchestra slowly but surely pull together and rehearse for the public broadcast they have been ordered by the authorities to give. In all the desolation that Leningrad had become, this shambolic musical event represented a towering symbol of resilience and defiance. The performance of the Leningrad finally took place on Aug 9, 1942, and it was played, live, through loudspeakers directed at enemy lines. It was a gesture of hope and solidarity that rang through the deserted and destroyed remains of one of Russia's finest cities. Eliasberg is an unlikely hero but in that hour he becomes much more than the nit-pickingly austere leader of a band of starving and struggling musicians, and gains both new status and our complete respect. He will never match Shostakovich's genius but his grit, determination and decency shine through the appalling times he is forced to endure. Genius is difficult to identify with because it is by its very nature extraordinary; Eliasberg, on the other hand, is an ordinary man who manages to achieve extraordinary things. He is, in his own flawed way, wholly inspiring. Sarah Quigley's fine achievement is to take one of history's most appalling episodes and through it to fashion a moving and uplifting tale of the indomitability of the human spirit. |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2013 12:46 AM PST THERE are times when nothing else matters. And it is precisely at such times, when nothing rouses or pleases, that a few moments with old friends can come to the rescue and remedy the restlessness of the day. Those lost ties can be reconnected with a simple nod or handshake, and lost moments can most likely be rekindled by someone most prone to say the most hilarious things. In those momentarily silences between uproarious laughter, we ponder, "Is this happiness?" Yes it is – the atom of joy. Then again, when such moments are needed but not available, I seek out "old friends" among authors from whom I have derived immense pleasure in the past. There is no handshake, nor is there laughter that leads to embraces. But no sooner have I laid my hand on their works do I feel at ease, and the swishing sound of pages turning is good enough to enliven my soul. So on that day when old distant friends were out of reach, I looked for Rohinton Mistry and Naguib Mahfouz – two of my favourite writers. In my favourite library where fiction steals every iota of limelight, both Mistry and Mahfouz are neighbours two columns of bookshelf apart. The sight of Mahfouz's books gives comfort; it is a sign of respect and all the titles collected there, an obituary. Mahfouz, an Egyptian writer and a Nobel laureate who died in 2006, was a prolific writer who had poured out a colossal body of work made up of novels, short stories, and plays. Though a devout Muslim, Mahfouz embraced existentialism, believing that each individual, not religion or society, is responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately. Through many of his books, all of which are awe-inspiring, Mahfouz advocated his beliefs. In a book called Children Of The Alley, one of Mahfouz's best known works, the novelist told the story of an Egyptian patriarch who builds a mansion in an oasis surrounded by barren desert. Within the boundary of the mansion is a story of an Egyptian family; beyond it, however, is a hidden narrative that involves the religious history of mankind. This book was what I had come to the library for on this day when nothing was rousing. An allegory of human suffering and striving, it stirred me now like it did a decade ago when I first encountered it. Splendour oozes out of the first two pages, spellbinding with the translator's poetic prose and engaging by being mysterious. If hell is described as a place void of hope, then Bombay (now known as Mumbai) is the vortex of hell. In a place steeped in mystique are stark hardships that glare at you with their daring eyes, a place where religion reigns even as apathy suffuses. Such is the setting of Rohinton Mistry's highly acclaimed book, Such A Long A Journey, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1991. As his characters embark on their journeys within a corrupt society where water is scarce and filth aplenty, the melancholy they portray is hard to shake off. It is this lingering melancholy that grants the book a place in my heart. The main character is Gustad Noble, a simple and honest man who is inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, and one who does not demand much of life other than health and happiness for his family. When his struggle and loyalty do not pay off, a sense of helplessness sets in, followed by increasingly negative turns of events. In the end, after much endurance, he questions what really matters, and we, the reader, concede as if we have travelled along on Gustad's long journey, met the people he did and endured the limits he is stretched to withstand. I was heartbroken a decade ago while reading it amidst the abundance my society had given me. Now, if I were to read it again in the same society where unrest and uneasiness are unravelling, I would see Gustad's chronic shortage of hope and happiness with more empathetic eyes. Such writing quells the restlessness of my day, and such melancholy tames my pomposity. When I strode out of the library, I saw the cloudless skies of Down Under where everything seems calm and positively assuring. Someone nearby, as I eavesdropped, complained about the pickles in her burger and another could not wait to return an ill-fitting garment. But the words of Mahfouz and Mistry were way too powerful. They drowned the petty laments, reminding me that far away, in many parts of the world, there is real confusion, deprivation, helplessness, corruption, injustice, anarchy, and discrimination. If these things have not happened to you yet, they have appeared in fiction. Fiction is not strange, as most think it is. It foretells realism. If there is one book Abby Wong thinks you will love to read, that book is Children Of The Alley. Go for it! Write to Abby at star2@thestar.com.my. |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2013 12:45 AM PST HOW do you feel about characters in children's books dying? If you're a parent buying books for your child, you may find yourself steering clear of books in which characters die. If you're an author who writes for children, you may be wondering if your characters are "allowed" to die. Personally, I feel children take death (fictional or otherwise) in their stride. If there is any fear or extreme emotional pain as a result of encountering death, I find it's because a child is unprepared for it and/or is not offered any support during or after the event. Talking about it makes all the difference. I notice something interesting, though. Parents might have qualms about their child reading a book in which the main character dies but they don't have problems with the same children watching a superhero movie in which many people might be destroyed in, say, an explosion or as a secondary result of the battle between the hero and the villain. A storybook character dying is sad because the reader has established some kind of connection with him, whereas in a superhero movie, the casualties are faceless and nameless, and the viewer doesn't give them a second thought. When a main character dies, it's almost inevitably a villain whom you wanted to die anyway. So ... it's not death per se that is the problem. It's the suffering of people (characters) you care about and have invested in. I've written in the past that the world of a story is a safe place in which children may experience and learn to deal with painful and difficult situations, death, pain and loss included. Call it a practice run before real life happens. Or, if real life has already kicked in, stories may offer comfort and reassurance. As an adult who's had to deal with a seriously ill child and the death of my parents, I can't think of books that have comforted me more than the children's novels A Monster Calls and Ways To Live Forever. They are extremely sad and every reading makes me cry buckets but the grief is totally cathartic and cleansing. Now, if you're a writer, you probably realise that when death happens in your stories it's inevitable – a character dies because that is the way the plot unfolds. You don't kill off a character to teach your readers life lessons or to cause a sensation. A writer can't prevent the death of a character and neither can she will it. Characters are independent creatures, not, as you might think, controlled by the whims and fancies of their so-called creator, the author. They have lives that must be lived, and their lives sometimes end ... in death – not because the writer decides it must be so but because the characters fall ill or into a well or in front of a bus, or gets very old, or is eaten by zombies. This has been my personal experience anyway. Funny thing is, I started writing this piece because I was thinking about Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back and This is Not My Hat, two hilarious picture books that actually have deaths in them, and not just deaths but characters who die as a result of being eaten. So, yeah, it's not death per se that is sad or terrifying. You could say that death is actually, literally, the end of sad. It's life that may be painful and your kids may read about it and feel like their hearts are breaking, but that's OK. Hearts break but hearts also mend, in stories as well as real life. Daphne Lee reads to wonder and wander, be amazed and amused, horrified and heartened and inspired and comforted. She wishes more people will try it too. Speak to her at star2@thestar.com.my and check out her blog at daphne.blogs.com/books. |
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