'But in time, Collector-sahib, everything changes. Nothing goes on for ever.' [page 107]
'He's in love with what he remembers. That isn't me.' [page 161]
'To live with a woman as an equal, in spirit and intellect: this seemed to me the most wonderful thing life could offer. To discover together the world of literature, art: what could be richer, more fulfilling?...' [page 172-3]
Dolly's departure had crated an unquietness in the house. He was sensitive to these things; they upset him. It wasn't easy to cope with change at his age. [page 175]
Nor did she want to write to Uma about this subject: it would be as though she were flaunting her domesticity in her friend's face; underscoring her childlessness. [page 190]
Uma gave her a wan smile. 'I met many men, Dolly. But... That's the thing about politics - once you get involved in it, it pushes everything else out of your life. [page 224]
Suddenly she understood why people arranged marriages for their children: it was a way of shaping the future to the past, of cementing one's ties to one's memories and to one's friends. Dinu and Alison - if only they were better suited to each other; how wonderful it might be, the bringing together of so many stories. [page 230]
This was the difference, he thought, between the other ranks and officers: common soldiers had no access to the instincts that made them act; no vocabulary with which to shape their self-awareness. They were destined, like Kishan Singh, to be strangers to themselves, to be directed always by others. [page 430]
It had been arranged that Uma would go with Dolly to the Khidderpore docks. Neither of them said much on the way; there was a finality about this departure that they could not bring themselves to acknowledge. [page 482]
Interesting read. I managed to read such a fat book (552 pages) after a long time. Amitav Ghosh is a highly rated author, so my expectations were also high. Clearly an enormous amount of research has gone into the book - to make the events, locales, customs and languages authentic. Reading this book makes you so well informed about the history of that period and region, and I loved it for this.
Yet I feel an author's "near-obsessive urge" to be true to history and culture is likely to make him/her a bit careless about the human terrain.
I think the book contains many unbelievable coincidences. The characters also sometimes seem unconvincing, saying things or doing things that one wouldn't expect them to say or do; for example, this statement of Dolly: 'He's in love with what he remembers. That isn't me', or Uma deciding to leave her husband after Dolly's departure.
The use of British-age formal, bureaucratic English in the novel is interesting.
By the way, imagine this story without the fictional characters of Dolly, Rajkumar, Uma and Arjun; just revolving around the king, the queen and the princesses. It will be so prosaic and bland. It's the fiction that makes history interesting in this case.
Comments from the Net:
- The Glass Palace considers the forces of war and governments and the role they play in shaping the fate of individuals. (From the Net)
- And that takes me to one of The Glass Palace’s key flaws, there really aren’t many decent characters. Rajkumar, Uma and Arjun (who is faced with agonising issues of loyalty, as the Japanese advance and he has to face questions as to what and who he is fighting for) are the only interesting ones in the lot. Dolly is beautiful and wise, but not convincingly human... As in much science fiction, the characters are there primarily to allow the story to progress. They are a vehicle, not a destination.
Worse yet is the tendency to cliché, all the men are brilliant, all the women beautiful (save Uma, who is brilliant), everyone is exceptional and special.
There is a triteness to this, a simplicity of thought which is fair enough in an airport thriller but less appealing in a Booker nominated novelist... [RKP: I suspect this has to do with the author's Bengali DNA: I've found the Bengali community to be prone to taking a romantic view of life, and creating gods out of their cultural icons.]
The Glass Palace is a broad novel, but not a deep one. The Glass Palace... is well researched, clearly something of a labour of love for Ghosh, but the history leaves too little room for the humanity. [From a blog]
