The Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux ***1/2

Paul Theroux writes about unique characters and unusual circumstances. “The Elephanta Suite” is no exception. Three novellas are included in the book. Each story has a different set of characters and they are only connected in the most simple, tangential fashion.
Audie and Beth Blunden, a rich couple from the United States, are staying at the Elephanta Suite at a spa in India. They are seeking a peaceful vacation and spiritual understanding combined with a glimpse of life in India. They discover the incredible difference between the devastating poverty in the neighbouring villages and the luxury of the spa. Both of them discover dimensions of themselves and their relationship that are unveiled through their interaction with the mysteries of a culture so foreign to their own.

Dwight Huntsinger, a US Lawyer and money man, is in India negotiating contracts for offshore production. He arrives with such an aversion to the country that he eats all his meals in his hotel room only eats canned tuna. He subsequently and accidently has some dramatic experiences that began with an encounter with a young street prostitute and eventually results with him living and supporting two other young women. His conversion is so extraordinary that he ultimately forgoes all material things and initiates a pursuit of poverty and spiritual tranquility.

Alice and her friend Stella are vacationing from college. Stella decides not to continue the journey which leaves Alice alone to pursue her own interests. She travels to an “ashram” where she participates in all the rituals and life style. Her accidental encounter with a domesticated elephant becomes a significant symbol in her story. To help pay for her accommodation at the ashram she gets a job teaching slang/American English to employees of an offshore company that give technical advice about products to customers in the US. She does such a good job that she is repulsed by her own success. While attempting to escape from the confinements of her making she is assaulted by one of the students. With no support from legal system the conclusion of the story is a startling metaphor.

All three stories illuminate the Indian culture in multiple ways. Simultaneously the contrast to life in North America is defined in a profound but understated fashion. This is an entertaining read.

The Testament by Eric Van Lustbader ***

Lustbader has written many action-filled books including a number of captivating stories with a Ninja or Far East flavour. Most recently he completed the Bourne Legacy based on the character of Jason Bourne created by author Robert Ludlum. The Testament has excitement, action, drama, intrigue and in that context it is an entertaining read.

Unfortunately one can be distracted by the incredible similarity of this book to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Most of the elements are the same, almost identical. There is the good guy, Braverman Shaw, who on the mysterious death of his father inherits an onerous task. It requires all of the fighting skills he acquired through training as a youth and more importantly an incredible capacity for untangling a maze of ciphers that his father left for him to solve.

There is the “good girl”, Jenny, who is assigned to protect him as a guardian and yet you are not really certain whose side she is really on.
There is a religious organization, The Order of Gnostic Observatines, (that does have some historical roots) that is hiding a protecting “The Testament” supposedly written by Jesus Christ. In addition they have also been harboring “the Quintessence” an all healing substance that can lead to immortality. Braverman inherits from his father the responsibility of being the keeper of this cache.

There are the bad guys, a secret society named the Knights of St Clement that was established by the Pope at the time of the crusades to locate the Testament and the Quintessence to support the church. The bad guys will not stop at any atrocities to succeed in obtaining the cache. The pursuit of Braverman is the essence of the book. The plot is further complicated by a group that has infiltrated the Knights and contaminated the whole mission as they want the cache for themselves.The 480 pages of this pulp fiction are filled with enough mystery and action to keep one reading. It is just too bad that one keeps thinking didn’t we already go through this with Da Vinci

"Love In The Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ****1/2

Love in the Time of Cholera

By
Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman


The difficulty of converting literature into a movie is that you can film the story, but could never capture the elegance of language that is prevalent in the manuscript. The obvious inadequacy of celluloid in trying to portray such poetic descriptions as:

“But Angeles Alfaro left as she had come, with her tender sex and her sinner’s cello, on an ocean liner that flew the flag of oblivion and all that remained of her on the moonlit roofs was a fluttered farewell with a white handkerchief like a solitary sad dove on the horizon, as if she were a verse from the Poetic Festival.”

This Nobel Prizing winning author part poet, part writer, part literary magician dramatically weaves the lives of three main characters in a book of revelations about youth, love, marriage, persistence, aging and death.

The story line is quite simple. At a very youthful time in life, Fermina Daza captivates Florentino Ariza an iconoclastic individual of extremely unusual character and unlikely physical appearance. Although they have no opportunity to speak, she is captivated by his dedication and the endless amount of letters that he sends to her. Ultimately she is distracted by life and discards him eventually marrying a physician who commands high regard both in the social and political communities. Late in life he dies. Fermina and Florentino are reunited in a most unusual elderly relationship.

The story is captivating. The language is hypnotizing. The imagery is magical.

The philosophic portrayal of old age is incarcerated in such definitive imagery that words become tangible and concepts become substance.

“There was no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age.”

“…she would not waste the rest of her years simmering in the maggot broth of memory…”

“…most fatal diseases had their own specific odor, but that none was as specific as old age.”

“He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to his artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”
“Florentino Ariza, on the other hand, faced the insidious snares of old age with savage temerity…”

One of the impressive aspects of Marquez’s style is the imaginative use of language to portray the most simple of life events.

“…and, at last he gave into the spell of habit.”

“…reluctant to confess his hatred of animals…He said that people who loved them to excess were capable of the worst cruelties toward human beings. He said that dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, that peacocks were heralds of death, that macaws were simply decorative annoyances, that rabbits fomented greed, that monkeys carried the fever of lust, and that roosters were damned because they had been complicit in the three denials of Christ.”

“…smelling a secret garden in his urine that had been purified by lukewarm asparagus.”

“No not rich,” he said. “I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. His strange nature, which someone once praised in a speech as lucid demential, allowed him to see in an instant what no one else ever saw…”

“…it was a tangible look that touched him as if it were a finger.”

“…and then all they could do was to use sex as if it were a bandit’s knife, and put it to the throat of the first man they passed on the street.”

“…and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.”

“The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.”

“…as he stumbled alone through the mists of old age.”

“Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

“…flowers painted lunatic colors.”


Although he waited a lifetime to reunite with Fermina, Florentino was perpetually promiscuous. He never views himself as being inappropriate because his love for her is unswerving and unending. He legitimizes his actions with the quote: “…their musketeers’ motto: Unfaithful but not disloyal.”


The author chronicles his pursuit and enjoyment of sensuality throughout the lifetime he spends waiting to re-establish a relationship with Fermina. From the descriptions of his activities it is obvious that he is not bored, but it is more an expression of being lost.

“He persuaded her to let them be observed while they made love, to replace the conventional missionary position with the bicycle on the sea, or the chicken on the grill, or the drawn-and-quartered angel, and they almost broke their necks when the cords snapped as the were trying to devise something new in a hammock.”

This tale that is revealed in a non-chronological, but logical, style dramatically investigates the power of a youthful love obsession that continues and persists until death. It contains the elements that make a read intoxicating including humor, imagery, eroticism, character, imagination, human strength and fragility.

And an added bonus of the book is the translator’s use of an extensive vocabulary. These are words that you will not find in the Reader’s Digest (or the movie version of the same title). You have to love the language:

Gerontophobia
Daguerreotypes
Profligate
Sibylline
Lacustrine
Passementerie
Succubus
Chimerical