A Golden Age

Taking a tip from the illustrious Chris Blattman, my model on being a globe trotting development worker, I decided to read this book in preparation for an upcoming work trip to Bangladesh.

I'm glad I did - reading (even fictionalized) historical accounts about a country is probably a fun, insightful way to learn about it, as long as you keep in mind the potential biases. In this author's case, I suppose there are two: first, she was born several years after the Bangladesh Liberation War (this story centers around the 9-month 1971 conflict between what was then East and West Pakistan), and so I suspect there may be some romanticizing nostalgia going on (the same way I might romanticize the Iron Curtain or the Berlin Wall). And secondly, every (West) Pakistani character in this book is pretty uniformly awful - from the shrill Karachi relatives to the evil Pakistani military forces. The book's obviously pro-Bangladesh, which is fine and well and all that, though I think its pride (and nationalism) sometimes spills over into implicitly anti-Pakistan jingoism too. Which is less appealing.

Onto the good bits! One very, very good bit is that the protagonist is a middle-aged lady, a mother of two headstrong, charismatic college kids. The middle-aged-lady-as-focus is very rare indeed throughout film/TV/books, and so it's always refreshing to hear this voice, see through these eyes. Rehana Haque, the heroine, is also nicely quirky: from her easy-going spirituality to her girlish rebellious streak. At times it strains credulity, or feels a bit thin, such as Rehana swinging from anxiety to pride re: her son's guerrilla exploits. But overall, the voice is consistent and compelling.

The overall writing style is also compelling, and it feels very, very familiar. At least, I feel like I would have written this in the exact same way - which meant that, while the familiarity was warm and fuzzy, it also left me wishing for something more, in the same way I find my own writing limited and even formulaic. The author is no Salman Rushdie, blowing your hair back with a BIG BRAIN strutting its stuff. Nor is she even a R.K. Narayan, captivating you with humanistic simplicity. Instead, it was good, never great - and satisfying, but never overly stimulating.