Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1949343 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Raj Kamal Jha's first novel, The Blue Breadspread: A Novel, is a curious, sometimes powerful, work. From the "First Story" to the final "Eight Words", the book is built up meticulously, scene by scene: a man, no longer young, in a house on Main Circular Road, Calcutta, writing to a baby girl sleeping in the next room, waiting for the couple who are coming to take her away. The man's sister, the infant's mother, is dead. Why is he writing? Who is he? What has happened to his sister?: " For years, I have been waiting for news of my sister." The poignancy of her loss and the sudden appearance of her child generate the urge to produce this fable of a family for a child who may never know who she is, where she comes from: "Something you will see or hear will remind you of something missing in your heart, perhaps a hole, the blood rushing through it ... They will then give you these stories." Instead of a family, then, there are stories--the lifeblood of this troubled, and troubling, narrator compelled to deliver the uncomfortable truth of the childhood he has shared with his sister. --Vicky Lebeau

From the Publisher
An original, touching story of family, of a city, of secrets
‘Something rather remarkable, almost a coming of age of the Indian novel’ John Fowles

In a house on a Calcutta street, lit by the half light of a yellow street lamp, lies a baby, one day old, wrapped in its hospital towel. In the next room, sits a man, all alone, writing.

Who is this man, at once frightened and determined? What is he writing? Where has the baby come from and where will it go? Tonight, these questions will be answered when the man unravels the dark secrets he has carried all his life.

‘A ghostly, elliptical piece of prose of quite magical quality, which tells the story of one man’s reconciliation with his past. It is spare and yet richly patterned . . . It is undeniably powerful’ Edward Marriott, Evening Standard

‘Enchanting . . . Jha is not afraid to risk emotion, but he never falls into the trap of sentimentality. That is, in itself, a considerable achievement’ Andrew Biswell, Daily Telegraph

‘Jha has a real knack for narrative, alternating urgency and delay to the point where his virtuoso handling of the story becomes almost tricksy . . . He is a remarkable writer’ Phil Baker, Sunday Times

‘A powerful, haunting and sometimes shocking novel that deserves to be read at one sitting and then re-read’ Cormac Kinsella, Irish Times

‘A grand work of images and words, a rich depiction of a drying, derelict world which shadow people – extraordinary in their ordinariness – inhabit’ Indrajit Hazra, Asian Age

‘This is an incantory, audacious book, notable for great moments of poignancy’ Baret Magarian, Guardian

Customer Reviews

Stunning and disturbing
I was delighted to read that The Blue Bedspread has got the Commonwealth Eurasia Prize for Best First Book. One of the Australian reviewers has said that the best way to read The Blue Bedspread is at night with sad music playing in the background. He is right, this book is a symphony of words and a collection of searing images. More than a novel, it is like a tapestry. I have lived in Calcutta for some time and now have been away for years but this brought back memories from my own childhood. It's refined and raw at the same time, honest to the point of being disturbing. One gets the impression from this book that here is a writer who needs to write. At times there are sections which get confusing and one has to read them again but personally, I felt that these needed to be re-read since only then you get the connection. The narrator is a man I wouldn't feel comfortable with in the same room although deep down, I have a grudging admiration for his strength and courage of conviction. This is must reading for people who need to reconcile themselves to the ghosts of the past.

Linguistically concise, yet poetic...
"In short, I will tell you happy stories and I will tell you sad stories. And remember, my child, your truth lies somewhere in between."

Kamal Jha has written a superb novel with a shocking twist and a wonderfully fulfilling denouement.

A pretentious book aimed at the international audience
Time is a precious commodity these days. And so when I do get time to read a book, I pray and hope that it will not be a wasted effort. It is a fine balance; staying with trusted authors versus trying out new authors. Over the past few months I have been reading many Indian English authors and I am getting more and more convinced that more often than not I am wasting my time.

The Blue Bedspread is Raj Kamal Jha's first book, a collection of multiple stories, vignettes and personal essays strung together around the artificially created peg of his Sister's one-day old child, sleeping in the room next door, covered by a blue bedspread that had also been used by the protagonist, the Brother and his Sister, when they were young.

The book essentially deals with the lives of the Brother, his Sister and their Father with multiple characters flitting in and out at different intervals. Through these multiple "stories", we eventually learn about the Family, but it takes a hell of a time for us to get there. Most of these characters are expectedly morbid. They either drink or beat their wives or kill their husbands or fight or have horrible mothers-in-law and in general, live terrible lives. Many of the pieces, like "Cable Television" or the piece on the American Center Library, are just rants and personal "Times of India middle" essays, describing facets of life in modern day Calcutta. These only help to break the pace of the "story", if there could be said to be one in the first place.

As soon as I started reading the book, my immediate gut feeling was to stop and give the book away to some unsuspecting "bakra". When I told my wife about this, she smiled and patted me on my wrist; apparently I was her "bakra". I stuck on simply because I am the eternal optimist, hoping that the book would get better and the pretentiousness would disappear. It does become a little better in the middle and towards the end, when the characters are more fleshed out, but since Jha does everything possible to make sure that we do not get involved with his characters, it doesn't matter.

As seems to be the norm with many modern Indian English novels, the stories keep jumping in time randomly. This provided me with considerable mental and physical exercise; mental exercise while trying to figure out the time periods the author was referring to, and physical exercise for my page-turning fingers, as I had to go back and forth to understand what was happening. An entire piece titled "Durga Pooja", in the "Sister" section is so devious that I understood who was who and what was what, only another 20 pages down the line.

And the hang-loose parts. Incest between the Brother and Sister is introduced, but never really further explored. Pederasty between the Father and the Brother is talked about and then forgotten. Or maybe all these are just ways in which to pack in as many "hot topics" as possible to make the book interesting and saleable.

Why! Why was the book written! Was it because he wanted to write something, anything! There is no doubt that Jha writes well and has a flair for words. But just as the ability to rhyme well does not a poet make, a flair for words does not necessarily an author make ...

The problem with trying to read books like this is that unless you can get into the author's head there is no way to know what exactly he/she wants to say. I sometimes think it is better to stick with the Harry Potter books than to read modern Indian English novels that try to say a lot allegorically, hoping that the reader will make the jump between the words and the author's mind. What does Jha want to convey with the "Sarajevo woman"! Why the hell is she in the book! At least with the "old man who cleans the pigeons", he is trying to make a point about the way the city is moving. But the "man with the cable TV who beats his wife" falling in love with the "Sarajevo woman" makes no sense to me.

Or maybe I am biased, because I prefer a good beginning, a nice middle and understandable endings with a proper flow.

I am sure I will be told that I don't understand the fine nuances of this book. But I sometimes wonder who these books are written for, if not average "Joes" like me, who are not English literature students or professors, but literate individuals who have been reading books ever since they can remember; having started with Chandamama, Amar Chitra Katha, Indian and Arabic fairy tales, Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew then Chase, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon and other "airline travel" books, with generous dollops of Shakespeare, Shaw and the classics along with sci-fi, noir, detective and God knows what other genres, including Indian authors such as Naipaul, Rushdie, Seth, Geeta Mehta, Anita Desai and the like. If I find the book difficult to understand, if I have a problem with its motivations, if I have to ask myself why it was written and why I bothered to read it, there has to be something wrong with the author and the book.

Or I guess with me!