The Pleasure Seekers

image courtesy of whsmith.co.uk

I haven't done a book review in a long while, but this one reminded me just too much of One Hundred Years of Solitude, so I just had to share some great quotes. The synopsis on the back cover reads like this:

August 1968: Babo Patel arrives in London from Madras, with curly hair, jhill mill teeth and dreams of becoming a success. When he meets the beautiful, auburn-haired Sian Jones, he falls in love instantly. She, like him, is in search of something bigger than what the home she left behind can offer.

But when Babo's parents learn of his intention to marry 'some girl from God knows where' he is given an ultimatum: he can marry Sian only if they agree to live in Madras for two years before returning to London. As the years pass by, the calamities, quirks and heartaches of first love, lost innocence, and old age unfold across cultures and generations of this mixed-up family in a topsy-turvy world.

Here are the best parts...

"It wasn't like that for us, Babo. There are so many ways of loving a person. With us, it was a gentle thing, nothing like what you're feeling now. What you have, it's something rare. We call it Ekam. They say that you may experience it once in your life or not at all. Some have described it as entering into a dark cave with no beginning or end. Some have said it's like feeling your heart burn on a slow fire. This Ekam, once you have it, you'll believe that you can eradicate all the guilt in the world, all the pollution and misfortune."

page 62

"Can you be free of time?" Manna asked. "Can you really know anything when you are so busy thinking and despairing? Take this sunset. So beautiful, you want to capture it and put it in a box for later. But can't you just enjoy it now? Can't you just appreciate the colours, the sudden beauty of it? And then let it go. Sorrow stems from the same place as pleasure. To understand it you have to hold it, and grapple with it, not try to run away from it."

page 92

Later, when the dark and pale of their undersides are gleaming like crabs in the moonlight, he whispers, "Tell me a secret." And there's nothing to tell, because he holds all of her entirely, completely, in the endless summer of his palms.

page 161

I was reading on the train on the ride home and the sun was glinting through the window. When it caught some colour and spread a bright rainbow all along the page, this is the quote it illuminated:

"I can't get through the day without you."

page 271

Michael Mendoza was there, too, sitting in he dark cave of the well with his dimpled cheek and marcasite eyes, still holding on to her fist-size pounding heart. Wasn't it strange to see him here? But Bean was used to seeing people here they didn't belong. She was shrinking, falling back into that sixteen-year-old frame: the slim hips and soft spine. She was telling him how he'd drawn fire from her. She didn't know it at the time, but the first one who did that to you would haunt you for the rest of your life. "You are a permanent ghost in my life," she told him.

page 290

I just love a good love story, don't you?