The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee

It feels fortuitous that I happened to read Lahiri’s “The Lowland” directly before beginning Neel Mukherjee’s magisterial family epic “The Lives of Others.” Before last week, to shamefully admit my ignorance, I didn’t know about the left wing/communist revolts which took place in Bengal in the late 1960s. In both these novels this movement plays a prominent role. While Lahiri deals primarily with the reverberating effects of one son’s involvement in the uprising long after the event, Mukherjee’s novel delves into the thick of it over those crucial few years at the end of that decade. These are two very different novels, but in some ways Mukerjee’s novel works as sort of an inverted mirror to Lahiri’s book when considering issues of emotional and physical proximity within families. Lahiri’s novel features a large family house which stands virtually empty after expectations that it will be passed on from progenitor to progenitor are spoiled when it’s abandoned by the two sons. Mukherjee’s novel also has a large house at its centre which is filled to the brim with a squabbling family (except one notably absent son) none of who seem able to escape from each other. There are many floors to the house which are inhabited by different generations of the Ghosh family many of whose status and socio-economic position within the family varies wildly from person to person. Over the course of this large, ambitious and brilliant novel we become very familiar with each idiosyncratic family member, the servants who dwell within the house and the idealistic son who left to join a revolution.

Personally, I love a good immersive family epic such as Marquez's “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Oates' “Bellefleur” or Ann-Marie MacDonald's “Fall on Your Knees.” I saw Mukherjee in conversation at the Southbank Centre earlier this week (he's fascinating to listen to in person and very articulate about writing) and he said that one of the greatest literary inspirations for this novel is Mann's Buddenbrooks (which is a book I sadly haven't read yet.) When I first opened the book and saw a family tree charted out I felt excited at the prospect of getting sunk into a family drama. The Ghosh family is certainly filled with drama. The great patriarch of the family Prafullanath was cut out of his own father's lucrative business and became a self-made man building a paper manufacturing empire. His imperial wife Charubala rules over her five children who grow to become very different individuals, many with children of their own. Like in many families who expect the eldest son to take the reigns of the family business, the Ghosh's son Adinath would rather pursue his own interests than fitting into a slot his father has devised for him. The second son Priyo tries to organize his father's various factories but is distracted by his own hidden sexual interests. Sister Chhaya is a fantastically bitter woman who often sees herself in opposition to the world because of her dark skin and crossed eyes. “Chhaya carried tales, not all of which were innocent. She got a thrill out of poisoning people’s minds and playing them off against each other.” She crafts ways to dominate, humiliate and control those around her. Fourth son Bholanath uses his influence at one of his father's factories to support a burgeoning literary group with devastating financial consequences. Youngest son Somnath has a wilful sadistic side and meets a surprising fate. This group of children combined with the individual wives of the sons, their children and the various servants who work in the house create a raucous symphony of conflicting aspirations and values. I could write a lot about each of these fascinating characters, but you need to dive into the intricate plot to fully understand them all. There are also many more characters, many of whom are the type to fall between the cracks of society such as a “mad” mathematics professor Ashish Ray who roams the streets overcome by a darkness in his mind. You can see why Mukherjee requires such a long novel to fully do all his characters justice.

It's Adinath and his wife Sandhya's eldest son Supratik who breaks from this over-flowing home and demands his own narrative which is written in the first person. His story is slotted between chapters which feature the rest of the family and describes his time becoming involved in the communist party, working on back-breaking jobs in rural areas and getting involved with terrorist activities. The age-old conflict of parents who want their children to establish a secure future in the family and carry their values clashes against the child's idealistic views of the world. At one point Sandhya confronts her son stating: “The rile of the world is to look after your family, your elders, your children, and see that you do the best you can for them all the time.” To which Supratik, mimicking the ideology he's read about, replies: “Has the thought ever crossed your mind that the family is the primary unit of exploitation?” Supratik believes in sacrificing oneself for the greater good over carrying on his family's legacy. It breaks Sandhya that she loses her son so totally. The mysterious process by which children grow to diverge from their parents' intimate embrace is handled so skilfully by the author. The refrain for any helpless parent who witnesses the long process of their child turning into a stranger is summed up with this question asked at one point in the narrative: “Did one ever know the mind and soul and personality of one’s child, even little segments of them?”

One of the difficult duties of any great writer is to describe the way in which language itself isn't able to sufficiently serve the characters he portrays. There are intricacies of emotion experienced which can't be expressed other than in the actions of the character and their surrounding environment. Through the spaces between sentences we glean an understanding about truth which can't be described with words, but which is most definitely there. At one point in the narrative a character “felt himself fall into the gap between feelings and their articulation in language.” Mukherjee captures his characters moving through their particular time and space grappling with sensations which can't be expressed, but which impact upon the way they negotiate with the world and each other. One quote I love in particular is from a scene where Chhaya confronts her mother Charubala about the fact of her own ugliness.

“Were love, compassion, pity expressible? How? Charubala certainly did not know. Love and affection were not particular instances of their manifestations, but rather the entire world one moved around in, an atmosphere. How could you isolate something so brutally flat and one-dimensional, such as words, from a kind of sky, which was intangible, both there and not there?”

Charubala finds herself unable to console her child the way she wishes because the complexity of her feeling and love cannot be so simply conveyed. Language has a way of sometimes failing when we most need it. That Mukherjee is able to show this while also conveying a density of emotion that draws you into the character's experience is a powerful accomplishment.

“The Lives of Others” contains a wealth of detail that resurrects a very specific time and place where huge swaths of people found themselves in desperate circumstances and their way of life in upheaval. Mukherjee elucidates the complex political movements of the time by framing them within one particular family's story in a way that challenges the way you think but is fully accessible, informative and beautifully written. The startling and brutal opening section of the novel acts as a bleak reminder of what's really at stake throughout the rest of the book. The fortunes of families can fall so drastically that they can be obliterated completely. The Ghosh family's dramatic downfall captures the complexity of these few years of life in Bengal and makes for an enthralling richly-layered story that I fully sank into.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

What is it that holds families together? A string of individuals tied to one another through the happenstance of being blood relations. For many the bond and ability to rely on one another is assumed. Yet there are disruptions in life and personal tragedies which can create schisms in the family tree - the reverberations of which can be felt for generations. This is the break in relations that Jhumpa Lahiri traces in her novel “The Lowland” where a family is followed over a period of some fifty years. Relations are held so tentatively over time, some bonding and forming unexpectedly close ties while other wither and become so distant as to make their connection virtually non-existent. So much so that at one point it’s remarked in regards to one nomadic family member that “They were a family of solitaries. They had collided and dispersed. This was her legacy. If nothing else, she had inherited that impulse from them.” Beginning with the story of two brothers in Calcutta, the novel follows how they grow to be very different individuals. After a tragic occurrence associated with the Naxalite movement (guerrilla groups of Communists formed in 1960s India) the family is split apart by grief and secrecy. The novel is set both in India and America where different family members settle. Time is shown to corrode the family bonds for some who feel its painful length creating irrevocable emotional division while others are held in a kind of limbo of feeling unable to break out of the fragility of a suspended moment.

It took me some time to get to this much-lauded novel which has been nominated for multiple prestigious prizes. Something about reading the summary of it and hearing the author give a reading didn’t capture my imagination. But I’m really glad to have read it now as it’s a highly intelligent, well-constructed novel that has stirred a lot of emotions in me. It took some time to get into it as for some time it felt as if the author were only reeling off information rather than weaving the details of a particular time and place into the lives of her original characters. But as I grew to understand the distinct lives she evoked and their points of view the book took hold of me. It carried me on this family’s journey as their relations splinter apart.

Lahiri raises questions about our sense of place and belonging. Quite often when we don’t feel at home we set out into the world to make a home of our own. Such is the case for one character who moves to a small, sparsely-populated part of America and feels “He didn’t belong, but perhaps it didn’t matter. He wanted to tell her that he had been waiting all his life to find Rhode Island. That it was here, in this minute but majestic corner of the world, that he could breathe.” Finding a space in the world where we can assert our own individuality can release us from the constraints and expectations of family life. Lahiri elegantly describes this process is necessary for a person to fully come into themselves, but also creates a loss felt from breaking a lineage of tradition and sours the expectations of parents.

There is a complex portrait of the way time and expectation filter into the next generation in this novel. For a new mother “there was an acute awareness of time, of the future looming, accelerating. The baby’s lifetime, so scant, already outdistancing and outpacing her own. This was the logic of parenthood.” Children can give an individual a sense of possibility, especially for a future that’s been marred by the entanglements of personal disappointment. However, rather than emboldening someone to charge forth and clear a safe path for their progeny “The Lowland” shows that children can sometimes only serve as unwanted and empty vessels of hope for a parent. Lahiri observes that “Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly planning for it, envisioning things that weren’t the case. This was the working of the will. This was what gave the world purpose and direction. Not what was there but what was not.” What the author goes on to show in her story is that loss and tragedy can create a scupper in the desire for time’s progression and a family’s continuation. When this is the case it can lead to nothing more than total self-reliance and isolation. Throughout the novel a large family home in India built to serve a residence for multiple generations gradually is left empty of those it was built for – a potent symbol of a failed vision of the future.

Interestingly, Lahiri notes the way the internet has drastically altered the way we relate to each other and creates a virtual level playing field. “A revolutionary concept, already taken for granted. Citizens of the Internet dwell free from hierarchy.” Yet, she is mindful of the way it’s another plain that can be a mental projection for all our expectations and can fall short of these. “Too much information, and yet, in her case, not enough. In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.” The internet can kindle and re-forge personal connections and eagerly yield swaths of data. But it’s always through a particular perspective and will always have limitations.

“The Lowland” had the unusual ability of pulling me into its story and making me care deeply about the fate of its characters without my even realizing it. This is an effect caused from finely polished prose that draw you through the day to day details of characters’ lives while providing brief glimmers of deep emotion. This forms a bond to the protagonists which sneaks up on you. The book builds to a scene from a particular character’s perspective which was left out of the beginning to create a heart-breaking effect. Lahiri is a novelist with such an assured sense of style, clear thinking and far-reaching sympathy.

Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

It’s been a long time since a novel’s beginning has arrested my attention as instantly as “Unravelling Oliver.” The opening scene is narrated by a man named Oliver who is standing over his wife Alice. He’s just punched her. It’s terrifying being immediately thrown into the consciousness of a man that’s committed such a violent, cowardly act. His motives remain mysterious and the rest of this short, powerful novel goes on to explain who Oliver is, what he’s hiding and why he has beaten his wife. The chapters flip between the perspectives of Oliver and a group of people who have been associated with him throughout his life to compose a portrait of a man who has committed monstrous acts. While it at no point suggests he should be forgiven for his crimes, the novel conveys a logical path that has led to his selfish acts. The story is skilfully arranged to reveal information slowly with the limited perspective of characters relating different pieces of the puzzle. They don’t always fully appreciate the gravity of the information they hold. I love it when books so cleverly help the reader to understand a story better than the characters involved. It makes for a really gripping read.

There is something almost Dickensian about the story here of a man born in difficult circumstances and emotionally neglected. Through his cunning he achieves fame and fortune, but experiences a downfall from grace when confronted with the truth of his past. Where this novel deviates from that kind of Dickensian structure is that the main protagonist commits an act so heinous it’s excruciatingly hard to feel empathy for him – whereas we can do nothing but feel totally on the side of Great Expectation’s poor little Pip. Because of Oliver’s hard upbringing and fear of being rejected, he feels it necessary to always hide himself and maintain a certain emotion distance from everyone. He remarks at one point: “Friends are just people who remind you of your failings.” The novel conveys that when this man became emotionally isolated from those around him his sympathy floundered and he becomes prone to acting out of total selfishness. This is borne out of a legacy of shame.

Something that really impressed me was how this novel dealt with many kinds of unconventional relationships. There is the fascinating regal French character named Veronique who bears a son in unusual circumstances. A rather self centred actress named Moya thinks herself rather coy in the way she pursues multiple men, but whose motives are much more obvious than she realizes. A repressed gay man named Michael establishes a kinship with Veronique who helps him on the path to self-acceptance and finding a flourishing relationship. Also Oliver and his wife Alice don’t have a traditional partnership. It’s commented that “You don’t have to love a person. You can love the idea of a person.” Of course, this makes for an unstable foundation on which to build a long term relationship. Loving a person for being the person they really are is very different from loving someone as you’d like them to be.

It is striking that although the novel ventures into narrating the point of view of many different characters (in one chapter it even daringly invokes the voice of Alice’s mentally disabled brother Eugene) it never represents the perspective of Alice herself. This is somewhat out of practicality. After Alice is severely beaten she enters into a coma so has no voice to comment. However, I did at some times yearn for her point of view. It’s only natural to want to hear the perspective of the abused over the abuser. But, as I neared the end of the book, it struck me as right that Oliver’s confession coupled with the accounts of people associated with him was necessary for accomplishing the powerful effect that Nugent makes. The novel wouldn’t have worked otherwise.

Despite the seriousness and sadness of many scenes in this novel, it is handled with a light touch so it doesn’t become too grim or ponderous. There are lots of endearingly human and humorous moments. At one point there is even a funny instance of the author poking fun at her own heritage when French Veronique remarks “Always with the Irish, there is the drama!” Nugent also has quite a thought-provoking take on issues of race and heritage in the story she’s constructed. The issues raised left me pondering the meaning of the ending and wishing I had someone to discuss it with immediately. The book is effectively a series of monologues which isn’t surprising given the author’s theatre background; the different dramatic voices form a complete complex narrative. This is an extremely compelling and accomplished first novel and I hope Nugent continues to write more in the future.

Watch a chilling trailer for the book with the opening chapter being read here:

12 "Classics" I'm ashamed I haven't read

The other day I was talking with someone about "classic" books and I couldn't help feeling guilty at some books that I still haven't read. Yes, there will always be books considered "must reads" that I haven't yet got to, but that doesn't stop me from feeling bad about missing some. Here are some great books I haven't yet read. Some authors like Shirley Jackson, Thomas Mann and Agatha Christie I haven't read anything by. Should any become a really urgent reading priority because my life can't possibly be complete without having experienced it?

Do you have any "classics" you feel guilty to have missed?

Little Reef by Michael Carroll

"Little Reef" is a book of short stories split into two parts. The first half ‘After Dallas’ contains stories that largely have to do with artistic ambition and mentorship. A couple researching a biography interview a prickly editor about his deceased ex-wife who was an esteemed author, a woman who feels like a failure in life finds an empty sense of accomplishment in her NYC social circle, an elderly mother waits for her sensitive son in a bar filled with colourful characters, the wife of a writer and teacher negotiates boundaries of intimacy with one of his students, an ambitious young writer wins a story contest and makes his first introductions into an established literary social milieu, and a man revisits memories of his best friend from childhood who is dying and harbours a dark inclination.

The second half ‘After Memphis’ is a sequence of stories with a pair of recurring characters who have achieved a level of artistic achievement. An older well-regarded writer Perry and a younger writer Scott are a couple living in New York City who deal over a sequence of stories with family, failing health, the social dynamics of a writing program, working to complete a novel while achieving better health in Maine and losing oneself in Key West. The stories in the first section deal with a wide variety of topics and situations, but many feature characters striving for a grander life of fame and accomplishment. The stories in the second half seem to work as a kind of counterpoint or expansion out of those initial characters. Here Perry and Scott have established themselves in the literary circles they've always dreamed of inhabiting. Over the course of their stories they come to terms with the real meaning of success and achieving one’s own ambitions.

The plot of many of these stories hangs upon the potential for forging relationships that could drastically alter the fate of the characters involved. As desperately as some characters are looking to make connections and align themselves with people they aspire to be, there are others who are wary of the danger that comes from courting admirers. In the poignant story 'Referred Pain' it’s observed that “young people always needed extra attention. They’d lavish it on you to get a tiny part of it back.” There is a neediness here which the admired are right to be wary of. In order to avoid following well-worn tracks which lead nowhere some potential relationships are abruptly cut off leading to inevitable disappointments and scuppered dreams. In another story “Barracuda” it’s observed that “Life got you in its ticking reaches and laughed.”

A tension exists in many of the characters who find it difficult to assimilate the hard nature of adult realities with the dusty dreams of young adulthood. In a strikingly resonant way, Carroll writes “Adolescence had been just an embarrassment and it locked you into making too many romantic, silly statements you lived with forever if you thought about it. You couldn’t overthink it. That way you’d go crazy.” Many of the characters in these stories are in the process of learning to adjust their worldview to a more sensible state of existence that doesn’t stubbornly insist on making wild aspirations a reality. Sensibly, the tone of many stories in this collection suggest snubbing self-flagellation over one's inevitable failings in favour of forging ahead with aspirations that adjust in tandem with how the world responds to you for a more calm and measured life.

There is an economy of language used in these stories which make them expand out in the reader’s imagination to encompass much more than what is on the page. For instance, personalities can be conjured and swiftly dispensed with in the space of a short memory: “Poor Corporal Maynard. Funny thing, he got killed in a silly accident. Some requisitions being craned off a transport dropped on him and crushed him, but the last memory of him was of the kid digging into Leo's armpit and bawling, soaking his undershirt. Had a screw loose, maybe was queer. Or the mother messed him up, smothering him. Unresolved conflicts. Shitty shame.” The power of this lies not only in the succinct descriptive terms chosen but in the skewed perspective of the character's voice recollecting the dead corporal. The assumptions and dismissive attitude suggest a conflicted relationship which didn’t fully appreciate the complexity of the corporal’s personality. However, it makes an attentive reader’s ears prick up and prompts him to envision what has been left out.

One of the great accomplishments of these stories is the vibrancy of dialogue that breathes life into a large cast of characters making them lift off the page and lodge themselves in your memory. Carroll has the ability to convey a rich amount of detail about a character’s position in life through their speech rather than needing to give lengthy background descriptions. He is also able to establish an intellectual and social hierarchy between his characters through pointed exchanges.

Take, for instance, this line: “‘One compromises in every situation in life,’ said Taylor, an Edith Wharton matron now.” Here the gravity of the character’s feeling is conveyed in her earnest statement while simultaneously slightly poking fun at the pretension of this precocious student. The young rattle off prepared deep thoughts which slide into ostentation and which the older characters wryly observe from a distance. Bold ambition-laden statements vie against world-weary experience.

Through representations of cross-generational characters many of the stories convey a sense of the way people’s changing ontological positions throughout different times in their lives maintain equal validity, but jostle against one another. The hopes and desires of youth are treated with equal sincerity when paired against the inevitable compromises and disappointments of advanced age. What emerges is a fraternity of sentiment that all our drive in life is wrapped up in the conflict of our present circumstances. There is something comforting in the notion left after reading these stories that moments of true contentment can be found when the hectares of life can be confidently straddled with a foot planted firmly at each end.

I was particularly struck with some details in this book which create a real emotional resonance for the simple way they pull you into the moment of the story. When Scott brings Perry into the hospital after he has a stroke it becomes a recurring question in the couple’s minds whether what Perry is lying on is called a cot or a gurney. It’s the sort of trivial detail which nags at the mind in a moment of real crisis when there are so many more important things at stake. Also, in this same story it’s observed that “They were both so bored, waiting. Healing was waiting.” The sheer tedium experienced by anyone who has been in a hospital dealing with a critical situation grates so excruciatingly up against the panic one feels at the many possible outcomes.

This collection is also a highly pleasurable read for bookworms and aspiring writers. There are a multitude of sharp-witted funny observations about the state of literature and those with bookish tendencies. Take these lines: “Literature is a sop to the lazies. It makes you feel good about doing nothing but reading, sitting around committing no compassionate acts, watching your surroundings get dirty and disorderly, getting more and more useless as a ‘mind.’” There’s a lot of loving cynicism and knowing nudges in these stories to all us book fiends. When life becomes all about books it becomes increasingly difficult to see what real-life correlation there is between the exterior world and an interior existence lived between the pages.

Personally, I love the way Carroll writes about my home state of Maine in the story 'Avenging Angel' with its early evenings, country trail walks with unexpected encounters and organic food markets. Most of the stories evoke the environments of New York City or Florida, but I can say from experience that he captures Maine particularly well here. 

Carroll's stories show a true depth of experience. Although the characters vary widely they are written with a generous compassion and an acute awareness of their particular foibles. The author clearly knows them well. It's being in the hands of such a skilled storyteller that makes these stories such compulsive reads. “Little Reef” is a brave debut book of stories that demonstrate considerable talent.

Here is an interview with Michael Carroll about the book: https://www.glreview.org/article/michael-carrolls-characters-tell-their-stories/

Above by Isla Morley

Our society finds it incredibly attention-catching and chilling when news stories about women who are abducted and held captive for many years come out. I think this is because these cases often involve normal middle-class girls who are then taken and held in a confined structure which is often amidst ordinary communities. The realization that next door someone might be held prisoner in a secret room for many years while you’ve gone about living your life is horrifying. Therefore getting into the psychology of such unusual cases makes very compelling fictional material. Isla Morley has taken on this subject matter in her new novel “Above” where teenager Blythe Hallowell is abducted by a man from her own community named Dobbs and imprisoned in a customized hiding space for many years. With gripping detail and vivid descriptions the author describes how Blythe must adjust to her captivity where she feels like “a convict – except I can’t figure out my crime.”

The terrifying truth about why Dobbs has chosen to kidnap her is gradually revealed. Her abductor believes he is justified and right in having taken Blythe away as she explains: “To define the terms by which I am here, he uses words like delivered and rescued and saved.” The author truly gets inside the twisted psychology of the abductor by laying out the language of his logic and how he tells himself and Blythe that what he has done is for a good cause. It’s part of his masculine pride that he believes he knows what’s better for a woman than she knows herself. Equally, the portrayal of Blythe’s struggle to maintain her sanity is portrayed in eerily believable detail.

The account of Blythe’s imprisonment is told in such a compelling manner that I was curious where the story would go when halfway through the novel the narrative takes an abrupt suspenseful turn. I don’t want to give any spoilers but suddenly it becomes another kind of story completely and one which is equally gripping in its delineation of horrifying events. This progression shows how Morley is working with larger and more widely relatable issues.

Comparisons will naturally be made with Emma Donoghue’s immersive novel “Room”. However, in Morley’s novel the protagonist wasn’t born in captivity but was brought there. This gives her a rich amount of memories to call upon and it also makes her hope for escape all the more persistent. She develops coping mechanisms for maintaining her sanity such as creating stories inside her head: “Stories keep the fire burning inside us, stories keep us from dashing our heads against the wall.” The same could be said (on a much less dramatic level) about why we are so drawn to reading and telling ourselves stories to deal with the larger challenges and inhibiting nature of life. This novel also puts one in mind of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and PD James’ novel “Children of Men” in their portrayal of hideous possible realities and pondering the meaning of survival. 

It feels that the challenge a reader can take away from “Above” is summed up in a line of dialogue from a character named Pops: “None of us are to be spared suffering. The better question is, are we being defined by our afflictions? Are we to live with them or live above them?” Throughout our lives we will all encounter suffering whether it be of large or small proportions. The difficulty is how to work through this adversity and not only survive but thrive. Morley’s novel gives a challenging point of view to this conundrum by creating a thought-provoking and compulsively-readable tale.

Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is. Why am I writing this? Why are you reading it? Does writing books or blogs or reading any of it really contribute to either our own understanding of the world or humanity’s evolution? No, it doesn't always have to be that serious and it shouldn't be. However, sometimes I can fall into slothful habits achieving nothing but my own temporary amusement or stare at the wall for an entire morning feeling disillusioned about life. But I always come back to books and reading seeking a connection, understanding and engagement with life. The kind of immediate voice and cavalier spirit that’s expressed in the pages of “Wind, Sand and Stars” is exactly what draws me back into living.

It’s not often that books can make you stand still and look at your life to reassess your goals and values. But that’s what Antoine de Saint-Exupery seeks to do in this memoir and philosophical investigation into life’s meaning. The book ends with a veritable battle-cry against all our self-centred ennui and the mediocrities in life we settle for in favour of a soulful engagement with the betterment of humanity. He was someone with a feverish passion for life although, at a glance, you wouldn’t guess it at first from his seemingly daredevil lifestyle. During the early 20th century he flew commercial planes over airmail routes in Europe, Africa and South America. These were journeys fraught with danger as was demonstrated by the near death of him and his colleagues on a number of different occasions where their planes unknowingly went off course or they were forced to make crash landings.

Saint-Exupery describes one such experience from 1935 in lengthy detail. He and his mechanic survived a crash into the Sahara desert. Utterly lost and with barely any supplies, they rapidly began to dehydrate and suffer hallucinations until they were discovered by a Bedouin man. Through his musings on life and critique of society, Saint-Exupery explains why this risky profession isn’t for thrills. “It isn’t a matter of living dangerously. Such a pretentious phrase. Toreadors don’t thrill me. Danger is not what I love. I know what I love. It is life.” He sees his labour as a pilot as a way of adding (if only with nearly invisible blocks) to the escalation of humanity and an expression of engaging in the pulse of living.

“Flying is not the point. The aeroplane is a means, not an end. It is not for the plane that we risk our lives. Nor is it for the sake of his plough that the farmer ploughs. But through the plane we can leave the cities and their accountants, and find a truth that farmers know.” Throughout the book Saint-Exupery describes a reverence for a pastoral conception of life over what he contemptuously perceives as people caught in bourgeois lifestyles that are concerned only with the frivolous details of their own circumscribed existence and toeing the line.

While Saint-Exupery was lost in the Sahara desert after his plane crashed he followed the tracks of a fennec fox

Crucially, he sees our labour and active engagement in community as the means to living fully and liberating ourselves from a miserly existence. “We want to be set free. The man driving a pickaxe into the ground wants to know the meaning of his pickaxe blow. The pickaxe blow of the convict, a humiliation for the convict, is not the same as the pickaxe blow of the prospector, which gives stature to the prospector. Prison is not in the place where the pickaxe blows fall. The horror is not physical. Prison is where pickaxe blows fall without purpose, fall without bonding the man to the community of men. And we yearn to escape from that prison.” Saint-Exupery makes a philosophical distinction between action whose meaning has no thoughtful purpose and action which seeks to forge forward the path of humanity. He also expresses a stalwart resolve that life shouldn’t be lived because that’s the way you’ve been directed to live it. Rather, it must be lived mindfully if we are to live as fully actualized and happy human beings. As he writes: “To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.”

Saint-Exupery is dismissive of cowardly approaches to life and nowhere does he see an action more cowardly and wasteful than in suicide. “I once knew a young suicide. Some disappointment in love had driven him to fire a bullet carefully into his heart. I have no notion of the literary temptation to which he had succumbed as he drew on a pair of white gloves, but I remember having felt in the face of this sorry spectacle an impression not of nobility but of wretchedness. Behind that pleasant face, then, under that human skull, there had been nothing, nothing at all. Except perhaps the image of some silly girl no different from the rest.” What a sweeping refusal to engage with the romanticism of ending one’s life for love! He would make Romeo and Juliet feel quite silly. Of course, many suicides are performed out of a deeper disillusionment with life and persistent feelings of failure. There are graveyards filled with artists like Virginia Woolf and Stefan Zweig who produced large bodies of admirable writing, but who still felt compelled to end their own lives for these reasons. That doesn’t grant their escape from life any more nobility, but does more closely align them to Saint-Exupery and his own demise when he disappeared flying on a reconnaissance mission in 1944. He continued flying at his own insistence although his colleagues didn’t think he was entirely fit for duty. Surely he knew the increased risks and that flying in such perilous circumstances was tantamount to suicide, but presumably he thought to settle into a life of inaction would be the equivalent of death anyway. He concludes that any one individual death means little in the scope of what that life has contributed to furthering humanity. “In the rural lineage death is only half a death. Each existence cracks in its turn like a pod, and gives up its seeds.”

Of course, it’s not necessary for us all to participate in the kind of high-risk endeavour which accompanies being a pilot in the author’s time (when the technology of flying was so much more primitive than it is today). Saint-Exupery sees great nobility in the gardener who digs not out of a necessity to grow crops to sell or eat, but to engage in creation. We come together as a civilization when we work towards the common goal of our own species continuation and betterment over being consumed only with ourselves or improving our social media stature. As the author writes: “Experience teaches us that to love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze together in the same direction.” Creating and passing on books is an act of love. My admiration and respect goes to people like booksellers, teachers and writers who clearly do what they do out of a desire to carry the torch and lead us all a little bit further no matter how fruitless their efforts sometimes seem in the face of lazy indifference. It’s why I revere authors like Joyce Carol Oates and Nadeem Aslam who produce book after book in an act of faith, in an effort to connect. I think they are in many ways quite like pilots bravely flying into cloud-filled skies again and again. The danger might not be as palpable, but it is definitely there.