I’m insanely late mentioning this but I will anyway.
Finished Animal’s People a couple of weeks ago. Not going to gush about it like I did about the Reluctant Fundamentalist, because it didnt’ quite grab hold of me the same way. That’s not to say it wasn’t wonderful, it was…
I think the problem was that I wasn’t really sure where the book was going, or maybe what the purpose was. The kind of books that get put on both long and short lists for these prizes tend to be ‘literary’ (as opposed to just good?) which tends to mean they serve a purpose or teach a lesson. There are lessons to be learnt from Animal’s People, but maybe the sad fact that they are not new(s) takes away from the impact the book could have had.
The story is that of Animal, a young man whose life is framed by the Bhopal Disaster of 1984, which is taken as the year of his birth. In the aftermath of the factory explosion, chemicals killed and/or infected tens of thousands, including Animal himself, whose spine was twisted in such a way that he walks on his four limbs rather than on two (hence the nickname). It’s an incredibly sad story, with little or no hope offered at any point and for that reason only I suppose we’ll be saved from some dreadful hollywood mOOvie version.
It’s hard not to get totally engrossed in this kind of book, and I did find myself hunting down information on Bhopal, on the disaster itself and on everything to do with it. At the same time it’s equally difficult not to detach yourself completely from a world so unimaginably different, and so unimaginably awful. I don’t know if that’s a failing of the author or of the reader.
The next one on the list is Winnie and Wolf, though with the winner is being announced on October 16th so the chances of having that and (heeyooooGe) Self Help read by then is minimal? Publisher’s fault for making both of them non-commuter-friendly…
