A suitable writer

I like Vikram Seth's writing. It's crisp and precise. Without wasting words, he is able to create a character, evoke a mood, set the scene. Although he doesn't ramble and dawdle, his books are not short. The first book by him that I read, A Suitable Boy, really needs a great deal of commitment on the part of the reader - the soft-cover version is 1,488 pages long. It is considered one of the longest novels published in a single volume in the English language. With four families at the core of the book, it tells many stories that weave into one epic tale of love. I lent my book to a friend; she must have found it so taxing that she put it down, forgot about it, piled other stuff on it, left it buried, never to be found.

Having enjoyed the book, I was on the lookout for others by Seth and found his first book, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet. The travelogue won him the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in 1983. In his foreword, he describes the book as "an account of what I saw, thought and felt as I travelled through various parts of the People's Republic of China as a student." He was studying at Nanjing University from 1980 to 1982, and in the summer of 1981, returned to Delhi via Tibet and Nepal, a hitch-hiking journey that took him "from the oases of northwest China to the Himalayas (crossing) four Chinese provinces: Xinjiang and Gansu in the northwestern desert; then the basin and plateau of Qinghai; and finally Tibet." His succinct style and astute observations bring us into an intriguing world and draw us into the lives of people who exist on a totally different plane.

His third novel, An Equal Music, also found its way onto my bookshelf. At 381 pages, it is not a massive book. A story about love of a woman and of music, it is set in London and Vienna and shows that Seth is a versatile writer who is able to get into the hearts and minds of non-Indian characters as well. His choice of subject could be because, as he says in his Author's Note, "music to me is dearer even than speech." The research for the book had him talking to string players and other musicians; makers, sellers and repairers of instruments; teachers, critics, agents and managers; the list goes on. All that work has given readers "a story rich with music, art, humour and emotion."

  

I have one more book by Seth on my bookshelf - his memoir/biography of two people who would seem quite unlikely subjects to hold a reader's interest. Two Lives is about Seth's maternal great-uncle Shanti, who ran a dental clinic in Hendon, North London, and his German wife Henny. Two really ordinary people, both then 60 years old, with whom Seth lived when he went to England to study at age 17. Initially a guest, after a while, he "stopped being a guest for Aunty Henny, or a project, but became a sort of companion. I was still 'my husband's nephew' when introduced to strangers. One evening, however, she introduced me as 'my nephew', paused, but did not correct herself. After that, she used the terms interchangeably. For Shanti Uncle, I became 'Sohnchen', or little son." 

Two love stories, a travelogue and a memoir/biography - each book different from the next. Seth moves from one genre to another, an accomplished master of the craft of writing. In an interview, he says that he had first been drawn to economics but then, "I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I'm enormously happy that was the case." And so am I.