Synopsis:
Authors, poets and academics gather together at the Jaipur Literature Festival to share their work and to bask in the adulation of fans. Rudrani Rana is both a fan and a writer, and brings her work in progress in a canvas bag to the festival: a manuscript of a novel, titled ‘UNSUBMITTED’. Not just any manuscript, however: this is something Rudrani has revised and rewritten over the course of most of her life, until only one sentence remains unchanged: ‘my body is a haunted house.’ Perhaps this will be the time she actually submits the great work of her life.
Review:
The book follows Rudrani and a small cast of other characters
as their paths intersect and they experience their own epiphanies and
life-changing moments at the festival. Anyone who has been to a literature
festival or other literary event will recognise the descriptions of the
performances, the panel discussions, the audiences. But this one seems to be a
microcosm of the world outside, and the connections forged over the course of
those few days are as intense as they are transient.
It was refreshing to see an older female protagonist at the
centre of a book, and Rudrani is independent and memorably eccentric. Her
penchant for writing lists and sending poison-pen letters in the form of cute
cards depicting kittens and flowers, with harsh truths / accusations spelled
out in purple ink, made me think of her as a cross between Vikram Seth’s Mrs
Rupa Mehra and Shirley Jackson’s Adela Strangeworth – but without the maudlin
streak of the one or the sinister side of the other.
The rest of the characters are not without their foibles
either, so we have a tailor-turned-thief-turned-poet, an unlucky-in-love
academic, and a gay journalist who goes saree-shopping with strangers. There’s
even a tongue-in-cheek reference to Rupi Kaur fans.
Gokhale evokes a sense of the atmosphere and beauty of
Jaipur – the distinctiveness of the landscape, the heat and colour of the city.
She also gives a sense of the myriad unique stories bubbling beneath the
surface of the seemingly ordinary people whose paths we cross every day in a
bustling city like Jaipur.
I enjoyed this affectionate but teasing love letter to the
Jaipur Literature Festival, and the way author Nimita Gokhale pokes fun at
literary circles and the sometimes self-absorbed pretentiousness of artists and
academics. The mix of humour and pathos in their behaviour and their stories
reminded me of David Lodge in some ways, and it felt like Gokhale had an
intimate knowledge of these events and the kinds of people who attend them.
I enjoyed it all the more because for 223 pages I could
escape from our current reality and imagine myself at an actual literature
festival, with actual human contact, rather than the virtual versions we have
been compelled to have in the past year.
Recommended for anyone who loves and misses travelling,
conferences, and the literary ‘scene’. Also anyone who has their own ‘Unsubmitted’
sitting in a drawer somewhere; take it out, dust it off, and send it out into
the world before it’s too late.
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| Author Namita Gokhale |
Thanks to Anne Cater @RandomThingsTours and HopeRoad Publishing for sending me a copy to review.
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Thanks for the blog tour support x
ReplyDeleteAlways a pleasure!
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