It's purely a coincidence that I picked The Glass Room and The Glass Palace to read in such short succession. Well, not entirely a coincidence. I read The Glass Room first and liked it so much that I may have subconsciously picked The Glass Palace to read next.
Funnily enough, I saw a lot of similarities in both the books - historical fiction, spanning generations, dealing with a specific theme of a room made of glass, and with a certain literary quality to them. However, they are different in all the ways that count, and I enjoyed both stories albeit in very different ways.
The Glass Room
The Glass Room is more cerebral in tone, and a much more "literary" book than The Glass Palace. The book starts out with a young Jewish couple (Victor and Liesel) living in Czechoslovakia before World War 2. Newly married, they build a beautiful home for their family - one with a glass room.
Btw, this house actually exists, and is a modernist masterpiece (see the below photo taken from Critics at Large website.
The house and this room in particular anchor the novel. The beginning of the book focuses on their lives in the house. However once, Victor and Liesel flee their country after the Nazi invasion, the house comes more prominently into focus - first as a research lab, as a rehab center, then a ballet school, and now in present-day times as a museum.
My Review
The first half of the book really pulled me in. The curious tension between Victor and Liesel and their unraveling marriage was brilliantly juxtaposed against the unraveling of the world around them. However, once they move out of the house, there are some dull bits in the book.
I guess that Mawer was stuck trying to incorporate some of the duller histories of the house into his story - hence the stories about the polio and ballet center. The ending also was mawkish and a trifle out of sync with the earlier half of the book.
However, those were the only weaknesses in the book. I loved the setting, the history. The characters are also complex - a lot of times there are no clear motivations for their actions, but that's all right, because how often are we conscious of why we do something? It's only afterwards that we look back with understanding.
The writing is also lovely. I think the author must really have fallen in love with this house, because all the descriptions of it are so beautifully descriptive.
It had become a palace of light, light bouncing off the chrome pillars, light refulgent on the walls. It was as though they stood inside a crystal of salt.
Even though I am not a person into home decorating or architecture, I got really interested in the design details of the house. I also loved how Mawer gave the house a personality - a rather cold and impersonal one, but still, I loved it.
Overall, one of my favorite books this year. This book made it to the Man Booker shortlist in 2009. It eventually lost to Wolf Hall in a year that was packed with very high-quality literary reads vying for the Booker.
The Glass Palace
I picked up this book thinking it was a Booker Prize nominated book. I have this ongoing thing where I read and track Booker prize winners and shortlisted books). Turns out I was wrong, I had confused this book with Sea of Poppies - another Amitav Ghosh novel.
Still once I started reading this book, I was hooked from the very first line.
This is one of those old-fashioned historical yarns that have fallen out of favor recently.
The book starts with the defeat of the King of Mandalay by the British. He and his wife are forced into exile in India. Watching them walk from the palace to the boat is a 11-year old Indian boy Rajkumar who finds himself enchanted by the beauty of Dolly - one of the Queen's maids.
A bright boy, he works his way up from poverty and is soon a self-made rich man in Burma. However, he doesn't forget Dolly. Once he's made his fortune, he comes to India to win her hand, thus starting an epic saga of love, family with a lot of history thrown in.
My Review
I went into this book expecting a very literary slow read. Turns out I was quite wrong. It's fast-paced, almost Dickensian in style. The book is teeming with characters that come and go. The setting of the story spans India, Burma (present day Myanmar), and Malaya. Yet, characters meet and separate and meet yet again. Familial and friendly bonds remain strong in spite of all that distance. I found that part a little unrealistic.
What I loved though was how well Ghosh shed light on India and Burma and how they fared under colonial rule. On the one hand, Rajkumar is thriving. He has understood the changing landscape perfectly and is perfectly able to adjust to the changing tides.
The parts of the book that deal with how he gets into the teak trade and later into rubber were truly eye-opening and interesting. Reading about the slow decline of the Burmese Royal family living an isolated and retired life in India made me sad.
Through the eyes of the central characters we see the ups and downs of these nations. Burma especially is the scene of heavy turmoil. The two wars, World War 2 in particular causes untold damage to all the characters - some of whom I had grown quite attached to.
While the second half is not as strong as the first half, I really appreciated the character arc of one of the people - Arjun, an Indian soldier trained in the British Army and asked to fight for the British against the Japanese. At first, he is loyal to the British, but then he starts to waver when he realizes how he's perceived by the people he thinks he is defending.
Some Indian soldiers revolt and join the Japanese army, some continue to fight with the British. Who is right? Who is wrong? Nobody can say. One soldier justifies his decision to fight on the Japanese side:
What are we? Dogs? Sheep? There are no good masters and bad masters. In a way the better the master, the worse the condition of the slave, because it makes him forget what he is.
I wasn't too aware of the turmoil of the Indian soldier and his mixed loyalties until I read this book. Ghosh didn't nail this part, I found it unsatisfying, but it gave me a certain context to this part of our history, which has always been rather shamefully hidden away in our history books.
Was the book a bit too long? Yes, it was. I found myself losing interest once World War 2 ended. The whole section in the end about Aung San Suu Kyi seemed unnecessary and rushed. I think Ghosh had trouble finding a logical place to end his book.
Still, when he did end his book, he did it with a bang and how. I never would have guessed that the book would end in such a funny and sweet way. It left me feeling really satisfied.
Highly recommend both these books.
