Eclipse

A Trilogy always works. The author figures out the mistakes she made from the sequel and that understanding returns her to the core of the plot that she originally conceived when writing the first book. The core of the Twilight Series rests in conflicts in a teenager’s life, conflicts that every teenager goes through, but only in Bella’s life does it get magnified into epic, scary & fantastic levels.

While New Moon disappointed (like all sequels do), Eclipse doesn’t & delivers against the reason why the Twilight series works.

And so, Eclipse comes back with a bang, giving a new angle to the conflicts in Bella’s life. If in Twilight the main conflict was her un-deniable passion for Edward vs. the sanity of self-preservation from a vampire, in Eclipse the conflict is simpler - her all-consuming love for Edward vs. her soul-mate love for Jacob. This becomes the main theme of the story, with the background of yet another (engrossing) bunch of vampires coming to kill her. In fact, Stephenie Meyer goes out of her way to lay out the contrasts between Edward & Jacob. They couldn’t be more different and their un-likeness plays to every regular love-triangle story. One is rich, the other is poor. One is cold, the other hot. One is in-human, the other too human. One is sophisticated & suave, the other raw & earthy. One is a vampire, the other a werewolf. In fact, at points the author over-does it, till the point you are reading and saying to yourself “okay, okay, I get it!”

There is also the ‘eye-to-Hollywood-screenplay’ moments in the book where you ‘roll your eyes’, like this exchange between Jacob & Bella:

“What’s up Bella?” he asked with a big grin

I rolled my eyes. “Same old, same old”

“Yeah” he agreed. “Bunch of vampires trying to kill you. The usual”

“The usual”

But, even with some of these flaws, the book works. Stephenie Meyer has managed to pin down this style of writing well. Bella’s growing love for both men in her lives is as believably irritating as is possible. Jake’s emotions and his immature reactions & uncontrollable emotional outbursts feel real & endearing. Edward’s reluctant & helpless tolerance to Bella’s in-decisive & self-destructive ways, feels again both authentic & coming from genuine love. The story is told well and Meyer again does a masterful job of flow, conversations & visualization. You can see the book happening in front of you, which is the author’s biggest win. The impending danger of vampire attacks moving from distant Seattle to Forks, looms large throughout the story and the dread for Victoria returning keeps you turning the pages to see if the orange head does finally arrive, after dancing around the entire time (& never showing up) in New Moon. Also, the inevitable reality (or is it?) of Bella finally turning into a vampire, keeps teasing you throughout the book... Will she, won’t she?

You can feel the entire story building up to a grand climax and it doesn’t disappoint. The climax is there and the story has an end. In many ways, Eclipse is the end of the story that started in Twilight. The Victoria chapter comes to an end. The two loves of her life are real and out there for Bella (and the audience) to acknowledge... no more denial, no more confusion. She finishes graduation. And the decision for her to finally turn into a vampire is sealed. Eclipse ends with clear choices in Bella’s life & if you would ask Alice at the end of the book, she would tell you exactly the life that Bella is going to lead, as a vampire.

But, Alice will also tell you that the future she sees is only as clear as the choices made at that point in time, and if the choices change, then the future changes too. So, until it happens, it’s still “a” future & unpredictable. Therefore, after the shadow cast upon the world by an Eclipse clears, what we have is a soon approaching Breaking Dawn...

Two Oceans South Africa Sauvignon Blanc 2009

World Cup is definitely the biggest thing South African this year, no doubt. But this sub Saharan beauty won't be a very distant second.

Tried the Two Oceans Sauvignon Blanc 2009 from the vineyards of the southern most tip of the continent, which is where it gets the name from as well... wines from where 2 great but differing oceans meet - the Indian and the Atlantic. The brand messaging talks about wines that have 'character & elegance' and it's absolutely true. The website (www.twooceanswines.co.za) talks about making wines for easy drinking... no big talk, flowery language, or pretended sophistication. The philosophy seems to be wines to be enjoyed easily and this particular wine I tried lives up to it.

We bought & opened this bottle on a weekend evening in Vienna and were really pleasantly surprised at the quality & the taste. It's the way god intended a Sauvignon Blanc to taste. Crisp to the core, spritely in spirit, enthusiastic in its experience and the right mix of spicy tones that linger into the mouth well after the wine has left it. Nothing like an uplifting wine that enhances the Indian flavourful food. A brilliant summer wine that is as refreshing as it is intoxicating.

Suffice it to say, that I will be trying some of the other offerings of this vineyard in the near future. Having sampled the goods with the white, I'm looking forward to trying the red offerings, especially some of the blends. More on that, as I get a chance to have those.

Twilight

All the makings of a teenage sensation. If Stephenie Meyer hadn't written this so well, you would think that she's the ultimate marketing person. She would have made Kotler proud. The target audience: Teenagers, aged 15 or below. The Positioning: Scary meets Romance. What could be more irresistible than a high school girl who finds the illusive passionate love of her life in a vampire, who 'wants' her equally desperately.

Ms. Meyer delivers and more, with a lot of style and substance. There is loads for those looking for blood-sucking stories. And enough (& more) for those hopeless romantic girls (& guys?).

In short, Twilight delights and lives up to all the hype. It's a well-told story, evocative in places, dark in others. It's got a good mix of teeny-bop romance & yet it flows well enough to capture a 30yr+ nostalgia for some of the years gone by (though there definitely were pages when I rolled my eyes over, saying.. oh god, that's such a chick flick!)

I've always felt the power of a story is in the characters it develops and how real the reader can visualise them, and Twilight does that. It portrays Bella very clearly (although sometimes a little too helpless for my liking), and her mother, and her dad. Very early on in the book, you get a good grasp of who she is and why she is the way she is. It paints Edward & the Cullens really well too. You are almost convinced that there could be 'benevolent' vampires. The book gets the portrait of the fine mid-point between good and evil right.. you can see the shades of black & red throughout the book and the story takes you through the highs & lows of Bella's journey of finding her love amidst the centre of evil and pain.

In short, for all those vampire story lovers, this is definitely next in the series of modern writing linked to the topic, after Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. If the Historian combined Travel, History & Horror to produce a scary masterpiece, Twilight definitely has created the next genre that combines, Romance, Youth & Horror. Nicely done & will be looking forward to reading the next in the series.

It Really Socks!

Amidst many of life's mysteries that man has tried to solve over the years, a significant one is that of the MMS, or 'missing matching socks.

Consider this. How is it that no matter how many pairs you have, you can never find a matching pair in the morning when you're getting ready to leave home. No matter how many new socks with different colours and designs you buy, once they come home, they all get lost in the socks black hole!

I think it's the price you pay for being clean. Think about it. You buy a new pair, it's wrapped in plastic, stuck together neatly with a clip. It waits smilingly in the cupboard for your first date, ready and easily available in the cupboard, lying innocently in the drawer with a big sign on it saying "pick me, pick me". It comes with the promise of a new beginning, a new start to sock fate, a final breaking of the curse of the missing matching socks, a readiness to being a new you... a new era where you will find the socks you want to wear in the blink of an eye, where you will not spend more time digging through the drawer than you do on making big business decisions at work, where every sock will have its partner together, where you will never wear a sock with a hole, ever again... to boldly go where no man has gone before...

And then it happens... it goes into the wash after its first use, and that's the end of innocence, the breaking of the ambition, the return of the disappointment, the shattering of the dream... after that fateful first wash, the new pair of sock returns as a single, never to be paired ever again with its partner... resigning you back to your fate of the extra half hour of trying to resolve the riddle of the missing matching pair in the morning, back to choosing between a hole-in-one or a hole-in-two, back to the incomplete life you knew before, the dissatisfaction that your feet have to suffer every morning...

And as you walk out of the door every morning, your shoes covering your sock fraud, you think to yourself, "this really socks!"

Sea of Poppies

Disappointed Mr. Ghosh, will be the one line response after living the book for the last few weeks. I remember excitedly picking up this book, craving to read it, but 500-odd pages later, I am less than thrilled.

The plot has a lot of potential to offer, which is seen in the richness of the beginnings of the book, where each of the characters are introduced and their lives painted against the East Indian canvas of the days of the Raj. Deeti's caste-based village & circumstances that forces her to walk down the forbidden path. Neel's stately but bankrupt zemindary, that is both better and worse for having dealt with the British. Paulette's mem-sahib to maid life change. The ruthless-but-clever English business-men, the spiritual & eccentric accountant, the nigger-to-sailor second-mate of the ship. And all of their fates linked to each other around the addiction & business of opium.

But, the book quickly unravels into a series of incidents that seem to prolong a story that could have been told in half the pages. Some of the details seem unnecessary and indeed just distasteful. For instance, the sexual fetish of Mr. Burnham as a reason for Paulette to escape, seemed utterly distracting and irrelevant. Her desire to escape would have been just as strong because of who she was. The exaggeration of the corrupt English-men (all or most Brits in the story) seemed a bit too uni-dimensional and un-real. Again, some of the details of the journey on the ship, Baboo Nob Kissin's obsession with the prophecy, and various bits of gloom, doom and oppression felt completely unnecessary and at times annoying.

There are still lots of things that connect and remind you of the reasons you pick up an Amitav Ghosh book. Raja Neel Ratan's transformation from the erudite Indian landlord to a convict on the Ibis is a touching journey, with loads of rich emotions; Deeti & Kalua's un-sophisticated yet the most progressive relationship and Paulette's more-Indian-than-foreign identity. The fabulous insight into the British Raj of them using the multiplicity of castes, cultures, languages & religions to their advantage, by playing "divide & rule". All of these work and evoke a connection with what these characters are going through. You can feel what they feel. You can see life through their eyes. You can see them as real people.

And it is these few and far-between glimpses in the book, along with the simple curiosity of what happens next, that will make me still want to read the second part of this trilogy. But, I will be praying for the magic of Shadow Lines & Hungry Tide in them. You're allowed to make one mistake Mr. Ghosh, but not another one...