I am not even done with this book and I'm blogging about it! I'm just so thrilled with this one that I am reading it as slowly as possible just to savor every word in every story.
My Nine Lives is a collection of stories -- neither fiction nor non- -- as each story depicts a character Jhabvala may have been, a life she may have led. "Even when something didn't actually happen to me, it might have done so," she explains in a foreword she titles "Apologia." "Every situation was one I could have been in myself, and sometimes, to some extent, was." The "I" may have been her; she may be trying out alternative destinies.
In other words, she really doesn't want to disclose what -- affairs with married men (usually old), back-alley abortions and a wide variety of embarassing or absent parents -- may be autobiographical. The stories are set in New York or New Delhi, both cities inhabited by Jhabvala for dozens of years.
I also discovered that Jhabvala isn't Parsi, like I'd assumed several years ago when reading "Heat and Dust." Her ancestry is German-Jewish; she and her parents emigrated to London during the Hitler years, where she met and married Cyrus Jhabvala.
The common theme in these stories is a quest, Jhabvala writes, for a person. "A person I have looked up to, or been in love with, maybe even for some sort of guru or guide. Someone better, stronger, wiser, altogether other...Does such a person exist, and if so, does one ever find him?"
So ultimately, these are nine delicious love stories, tender, passionate, heart-breaking ... worth savoring, then reading over.
1 comment:
sounds like this tag that was going around recently - eight truths and a lie!
- s.b.
Post a Comment