A review by kamila79
The Book of Chocolate Saints by Jeet Thayil
5.0
There are some authors who hypnotise me with their writing. Borges, Cortázar, Cărtărescu, Alameddine, Vuong, and now Thayil. In my mind I collect imaginary moments of happiness (next to the real ones I store in my heart) and one of them would be to sit on the floor with all of these writers, in silence, and listen to them converse about literature.
“The Book of Chocolate Saints” by Jeet Thayil is an original novel, constructed of a narrative plot in prose, of poems, as well as of interviews (or rather monologues) of various people, all with their own voice and distinctive personality. All that completes the portrayal of fictional character Newton Francis Xavier, a Goan poet and painter, the co-founder of the Mumbai-based Hung Realists poetry movement. The book spans several decades and evokes, among others, Goa in the 1940s and 1950s, contemporary Delhi and Bangalore, New York post-9/11, as well as Mumbai of the 1970s and 1980s. The trio: obnoxious and troubled Xavier, his uncompromising and fierce younger partner Goody Lol, and oftentimes annoying and gullible Xavier’s biographer Dismas Bambai, who chases the couple in the US and India, are all rather unpredictable, impulsive and very flawed. But who wants to read about perfect characters who never make mistakes? Thayil, not hiding the fact that he himself was for many years addicted to alcohol and drugs, was able to very convincingly depict the states of intoxication, self-destruction and self-delusion, invariably related to addiction. Megalomania combined with periods of self-doubt and paranoia, Xavier’s life-long companions, couldn’t have been painted better.
I read the book and marvelled: there is so much I don’t know! I felt as if I was invited to some secret meetings, during which relationships between various Indian poets I had never heard about were discussed. People lampooned them, talked about animosities and affinities between some of them and took them off their pedestals. I felt honoured to get a glimpse into the realm previously unknown to me. But isn’t it the power of literature - to open new worlds to a reader?
A marvellous, delirious, spellbinding, absolutely unmissable gem of a novel.
“The Book of Chocolate Saints” by Jeet Thayil is an original novel, constructed of a narrative plot in prose, of poems, as well as of interviews (or rather monologues) of various people, all with their own voice and distinctive personality. All that completes the portrayal of fictional character Newton Francis Xavier, a Goan poet and painter, the co-founder of the Mumbai-based Hung Realists poetry movement. The book spans several decades and evokes, among others, Goa in the 1940s and 1950s, contemporary Delhi and Bangalore, New York post-9/11, as well as Mumbai of the 1970s and 1980s. The trio: obnoxious and troubled Xavier, his uncompromising and fierce younger partner Goody Lol, and oftentimes annoying and gullible Xavier’s biographer Dismas Bambai, who chases the couple in the US and India, are all rather unpredictable, impulsive and very flawed. But who wants to read about perfect characters who never make mistakes? Thayil, not hiding the fact that he himself was for many years addicted to alcohol and drugs, was able to very convincingly depict the states of intoxication, self-destruction and self-delusion, invariably related to addiction. Megalomania combined with periods of self-doubt and paranoia, Xavier’s life-long companions, couldn’t have been painted better.
I read the book and marvelled: there is so much I don’t know! I felt as if I was invited to some secret meetings, during which relationships between various Indian poets I had never heard about were discussed. People lampooned them, talked about animosities and affinities between some of them and took them off their pedestals. I felt honoured to get a glimpse into the realm previously unknown to me. But isn’t it the power of literature - to open new worlds to a reader?
A marvellous, delirious, spellbinding, absolutely unmissable gem of a novel.