124 february 2020
ME & MY SHELF
The English Patient
BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE,Bloomsbury
Publishing, ` 499 “We die containing a
richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we
have swallowed, bodies we have plun-
ged into and swum up as if rivers of wis-
dom, characters we have climbed into
as if trees, fears we have hidden in as
if caves.” Michael Ondaatje’s serai of
broken souls seeking rescue, correction,
redemption, solace, this book has the
presence of an opera.Beloved
BY TONI MORRISON,
RHUK, ` 499
Toni Morrison legiti-
mizes an invisible and
challenging thing: the
friendship between a
living person and a
ghost in this bookwhich recreates the private cosmology of
a band of former slaves united by love or
horror or liberation.Light Years
BY JAMES SALTER, Penguin Modern
Classics, ` 499 James Salter is a paragon
of elegance. This is the story of Viri
and Nedra, and their marriage afflic-
ted by inertia. It is also about how we
suffer regardless of our lot—in big
beautiful houses, at dinner tables with
friends, around lovers. Salter proves
middle-class life is another kind of
enslavement—what’s tragic is that
it is voluntary.Kitchen
BY BANANA YOSHIMOTO,Faber & Faber, ` 499
Banana Yoshimoto draws from the
whirlpool of modern Japanese life—
where emotion fails reason, with photo:siddharth^dhanvantshanghviSiddharth Dhanvant
Shanghvi’s debut novel, The
Last Song of Dusk (2004), won
the Betty Trask Award. A
former contributor to The New
York Times, Shanghvi’s most
recent book is The Rabbit &
The Squirrel. A memoir, Loss,
is forthcoming this summer.