What I’m Reading Jacob Rajan
I’ve just finished reading The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, which I loved. Set aboard a ship bound for England from Sri Lanka in the 1950s, the novel follows the adventures of a young boy named Michael as he navigates the complexities of adulthood amidst a cast of gorgeously eccentric characters.
There’s a woman who keeps pigeons in her pockets, a man who has a garden of medicinal and poisonous plants below deck, a deaf girl with a fatal secret and a wealthy tycoon lying in the first-class stateroom dying of a curse.
Ondaatje’s writing style is so lyrical and the world he creates so nostalgic and full of longing, it resonated with me more like music or a great film than a novel. I gushed about it to my 23-year-old son saying how lucky I felt to stumble upon this gem on our bookshelf with no idea how it got there. Isaac gently reminded me he’d given it to me for my birthday several years ago. Oops.
I pinched Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan from his bookshelf and subsequently almost read it in one sitting. The book is edited
conversations between Cave and O’Hagan spanning a couple of years. They cover so much territory – it’s like this free-ranging podcast by a couple of very articulate friends. I think Cave is an incredible lyricist and his responses to O’Hagan’s insightful questions have that same deep, poetic, melancholic introspection he brings to his songs.
I bought copies for friends. It almost became required reading for Indian Ink. I asked Isaac where he’d got it. Apparently, I bought it for him for his birthday a few years ago. Oops.