The Village by Nikita Lalwani

The Village by Nikita Lalwani (2012)

Read: July 2012

 

This is one of the few books that I have gone out of my way to buy within the first few months of it being published.  This is because the author is the sister of a good friend from university.  The Village is her second book; the first being Gifted which I also read soon after it was published and enjoyed.

The ‘blurb’ for the book described the story as being about a film crew in India and the ethical decisions they have to make.  This sounded really up my street as it would be more than your simple' ‘film crew abroad’ story. And it was.

It was more than a simple narrative about documentary makers, but there was more about the group dynamics and the relationships between characters within the crew than I expected there to be.  I thought that there was potential to focus more on the protagonists decisions and thought processes around the process of documentary making, than on whether or not she fancied the presenter.  For me, this meant that I enjoyed the first and third sections of the book more than the middle section.  It was the closing section that I found the most interesting in terms of the moral dilemmas that it explored.

What was also interesting with this book, and like Gifted before it, was the dual nationality aspect of the protagonist; someone existing in two cultures but feeling like they don’t quite fit in either.  In a way it reminded me of Alaa Al Aswany, in that Lalwani’s first novel was about an British-Indian family set in Cardiff, but this was about a British-Indian woman returning to India. Both books featured the complex expectations that are unknowingly placed on your shoulders when in such situations.

Overall I did enjoy the book and have recommended it to some friends. I was hoping to recommend it to a media studies teacher, but I haven’t done so yet as I’m not sure the ethical aspects of film-making featured as highly in the book as they could have done compared to the relationships aspect of the story.

I Walked The Line by Vivian Cash

I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny by Vivian Cash (2008)

Read: July 2012

I picked this up ages ago as we’d really enjoyed the Johnny Cash film biog with Joachin Phoenix.  This book thought focused on Johnny Cash’s life with his first wife, but I thought would still be a good read.

When setting down to read it the blurb focused heavily on the fact that she was ‘setting the story straight’ and ‘telling her side’ which had ‘never been told before’.  I couldn’t really work out what preconceptions or stories I’d heard before about Johnny’s first wife and his early career that needed setting straight, but I’m sure she had a good reason to feel hard done by and the need to write the book.

It turned out that over 75% of the book is actually transcripts of three years worth of letters that Johnny had written to Vivian when he was posted in Germany.  He went there just a few months after they met and they were married just a month after her returned from his posting.  To be honest I didn’t read every word of all the letters, but I did skim through them and read some in more detail.  The effect of included them all was seeing a relationship develop (although only being able to see one side of the relationship was weird) and seeing how tough life is when you are posted away from your loved ones.

What the narrative in the book then did show, was how Vivian had to be the stay-at-home mum or their one, then two, then three, then four girls, while Johnny went on tour.  It seems that as the family grew in size Johnny had to be away more often and this naturally led to the strain on the relationship. What led Johnny to drugs I don’t know, but the relationship suffered further from the drugs and then from June Carter.

This is probably the area that is in dispute and that Vivian feels the need to justify, but it is clear that it was not a good situation to be in; four girls, two women, Johnny and the drugs.

I’ve passed this book on to MummyB and warned her that it is interesting, but the bulk of the book is the letters and can be skimmed through to get the rough idea, rather than ploughing through which won’t lead to much more of a deeper understanding.