Some charming characters

Book Review

Deepti Menon’s e-book, Literary Characters with Character, presents 26 illustrious characters from literature. This book is a compilation of what the author wrote for the A-to-Z Challenge of Blogchatter and hence a few characters may be here by the sheer practical demand of the alphabet. The witches in Macbeth, for example, who take the place of the letter W under the title ‘The Weird Sisters’. [‘Witches’ would have been as good a title, I guess.] But it must be added hastily that the author has made a judicious selection of characters notwithstanding the alphabetic diktat. From Atticus Finch of Harper Lee’s unforgettable classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, to Dr Zhivago of an even greater classic, we have a treasure house of illustrious characters here.

The paramount service this book does is to remind you of certain characters you shouldn’t forget. Those who know these characters will, hence, find this book a refreshing whiff of some sweet past. Those who are not so familiar with classical literature will find this book a gentle invitation to a big world that lies beyond the horizons of mediocre imagination. Not that these characters are sweet or gentle. Characters that leave deep marks on your soul can never be sweet or gentle. But your souls will be sweet and gentle if you have internalised the essential lessons from these characters. This is why Deepti Menon’s book becomes a guiding star in the engulfing darkness.  

The author presents not only the characters but also quite a bit of trivia associated with them like the movies made about them and the actors who played them. This can make the book appealing to the younger generation, I believe.

I got to know some interesting facts from this book. For example, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray was not much of a success in the beginning. “It was after Wilde’s death in 1900 that the book began to attract attention and acclaim and was adapted to the stage as well as the film world,” writes Deepti. She continues to inform us that “The most popular film adaptation came in 1945, where Angela Lansbury won a Best Supporting Actress nomination…”

Wilde is of a personal interest to me simply because I have always loved his bohemianism. And Deepti enlightens me with a quote like: “(The Picture of Dorian Gray) contains much of me (Oscar Wilde) in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am; Lord Henry, what the world thinks me; Dorian is what I would like to be.” Having struggled with quite a few inner demons, I know what Wilde went through. Thanks to Deepti for that whiff of the soul’s pangs.

Occasionally this book gives us some quotes too. I particularly love the one-liners from Tyrion Lannister. “A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.” I’m going to use this one in my speech on Monday to a group of 2300 students on the occasion of the Reading Day. Here’s another from Deepti’s book: “Once you have accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.” And the best one: “People often hunger for truth but seldom like the taste when it is served up.”

So, welcome friend, to meet a wide range of charming characters including the fiery Kannagi of the Tamil classic Silappatikaram and Wodehouse’s lovably bungling Bertie Wooster.

My complaint about this book, however, is that the author could have gone a little deeper into the psyche of these complex characters. They have a lot more to offer than what we find in this book. That is why this book stops short of being the entertainment and becomes an usherer.

PS. Deepti Menon’s book is available for free download here.

My own e-book (free to download) in the same series as the above one is Humpty Dumpty’s 10 Hats and the first review of it (as far as I know) is here. Let me steal an extract from the review and put here:

The 10 short stories transported me into a different world than my home, through its narration. It elicited a rainbow of emotions, feelings of fear, smile, laughter, awe, affection, love and more. While this was for the words that one reads, each story has layers to them highlighting the societal hypocrisy, duality, reality in each of the events that unfold. The people in the short stories feel like they were one among us, our family, friends, neighbours, conmen, godmen, and leaders whom we might know, and probably also met in our real life, who think like us, and sometimes we might probably also see a reflection of ourselves in one or more of the characters from these stories. Some we might accept while some we might be against. It was pleasure to read names that I have been used to hearing from my everyday life, experience the beauty (and eeriness of) locations that I have visited with family and friends during my school excursions and family vacations, all over again.