Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh – RV
Apols received alongside notes: ChrisB, MarkT,
Date of Meeting - Thursday, 7th June 2018, at the Flower and Forrester, Combe Down
This was generally a book which people enjoyed,
as shown by the range of scores, 5.5-8.0, with a mean of 6.79. As ChrisW said – “a fascinating book, lots of fun in it – it certainly got my attention”,
and MarkW: “I enjoyed the book, and
enjoyed the long voyage!”, and MarkT: “I
enjoyed reading it”, and Andrew: “A terrific story, with great characters and atmosphere …. I didn't want to leave it, and now want to read the rest of the trilogy”,
and ChrisB: “I enjoyed this lively and
rumbustious tale set in a time and place of such contrasts so much that I
nearly started the next book of the trilogy! And whilst some of the views held
and experiences undergone are very different from our times, there is a
resonance to the social relationships that echoes into our own times. Are we
really more civilised than that time?”, and Richard “I very much enjoyed this book – this was a book that I looked forward
to returning to read”, and Willm: “it
was easy to read”. On the other hand, MarkT said “I mostly enjoyed the book”, and John said “I was glad to finish this book!”
But there were a wide range of views and opinions
put forward, with many people taking rather different views – all which is good
for a robust discussion.
So it was also a book which grew on some people
(“I was underwhelmed at the start, but it
got better: it was slow until Zachary was introduced” (Andrew); or “took a little while to get into, but very
enjoyable read” (ChrisB); or “the
last third of the book was much better for me, as I read this over a few train
rides and flights, whereas certain parts of the early book I had forgotten, as
I read that a while ago, and that made some characters harder to understand,
such as Zachary’s past. I enjoyed the Indian-ness of the book” (MarkT),
although others found that the lack of character development meant that the
book got less good as it went on.
One of the areas
which most people liked was the plot: there were a lot of interesting
elements: the opium trade, how central it was to the British East India Company
- as John said: “the context was
fascinating – the slave/indentured labour, the Opium Wars, the East India Company
…”, “the arrogance of British
colonialism was well brought out” (MarkW), “the destruction of the old ways of life – drowning old ways of life in
a sea of poppies” (Willm); “Set in
(another) shameful period of UK history when Free Trade was the will of God and
the principal trade was selling opium to Chinese people. The Opium Wars are in
the foreseeable future as China starts to restrict the trade that is turning
its people into addicts” (ChrisB). And the way the book moved location
between the land, the river and the sea came in for praise: “you became part of the ship”.
Another positive was
the way that the different elements of the plot hung together well, all
coming together around the old slaving ship, the Ibis – indeed, the issue of
whether the Ibis was still a slaving ship was raised – it is not clear that the
position of many of the inhabitants of the Ibis was so different from slavery.
But others felt that
although “the descriptive passages were
very good, the rest felt like a Saturday afternoon matinee, with lots of ‘derring-do’
and with the author telegraphing his story” (Willm); or as John said: “the plot was OK”. And for others, “the disjointedness of the story, the way it
jumped from character and event, even in the same page, made the story hard to
follow, especially at first” (MarkT).
A main area which came in for both praise and
criticism (but much more of the latter) was the characters and the
characterisations. The characters
themselves were often interesting and widely-ranged, and there were a lot of
them, and they in general were written well enough so that one could
distinguish between them – as ChrisB said: “All
the characters are defined as separate people with their own quirks and
motivations”, and he also wrote that there was “a great cast of 60 plus characters … headed up by Deeti, the woman
forced to abandon her child by an oppressive family whose premonitory vision of
The Ibis kicks off the story. She heads the group of women who end up on the
boat as coolies. Paulette is the other strong female character, showing the
same independent and thoughtful spirit as her botanist father, but also
constrained by her social position as an orphan and a woman”. MarkT agreed and “found some of the characters very interesting, especially Paulette and
Deeti”. But to others, they were instead
often caricatures: “they were not really
characters at all – caricatures – not real at all” as Willm put it, or “all of the main characters were
one-dimensional” as John said; and although “there was a huge cast, some had ‘back-stories’ whereas others did not”.
Further, some of them seemed unrealistic: “Paulette,
was far too modern and unrealistic” as ChrisW said; and many felt
that we (the readers) were not made to care and feel for the characters “I cared much less for these characters than
I did for those in another large book about India, A Fine Balance”, as
Andrew said. Some felt that the characters did not seem to develop – as Richard
said: “I didn’t feel that they developed
very much. They certainly had life-changing
experiences. To take only one example, Deeti was married, drugged, raped and
impregnated by her husband’s family, had her husband die, gave up her only
daughter, was almost burnt alive on her husband’s funeral pyre, shacked up with
the local giant, and ran away to sea – but I didn’t really feel that she
changed at all from the start to the end of that series of life changing
experiences. Similarly, Zachary Reid, starting off as a ‘black’ man, a
carpenter, relatively suddenly being promoted all the way to Captain and then
back down to 2nd mate, being mistaken for a white nobleman, falling
for a clever white girl, and none of that seemed to change him at all.” But ChrisB felt very differently: “The characters are well developed in their home settings before
arriving at the ship so we see how far they have travelled, physically,
psychologically and socially before they arrive. This paints a vivid picture of
life in colonised NE India from the points of view of local people and
immigrants, Indian princes, foreign business and scientist families. All are
affected by the opium trade as poppy growers, opium manufactures, exporters,
ship owners, investors and borrowers, and their staff and servants”. In fact, for Chris, the ship itself was
another well-developed character: “The
main vehicle for the story is the ship, the Ibis, an old slaving ship which
attracts a host of characters to make the journey to Mauritius, whether as
convicts, coolies, guards, crew, officers and owner. The ship has its own chequered history as a
slaver in the triangular trade between Africa, the Caribbean and Europe and
provides a consistent and finely described presence in all her states of sail
and anchorage”, as was Zachary: “the
mixed race American ships carpenter who becomes the captain for a while is a
finely honed character who had a pivotal role throughout the story along with
the ship itself”.
Another area which came in for both praise and
criticism was the amount of research that the author had
undertaken. He had done it very
diligently, and the more nautical amongst us said that the descriptions of the
ship and the sailing were very good. But
he wore his learning heavily – there was too much ‘research’ and it felt as if
he needed to show his readers how much research he had done. As MarkW said, “It was a tour de force in terms of the
research – history, nautical, language – but I felt that he was demonstrating
his cleverness too much”. The language element of this involved
using probably correct but very archaic English, lots of ‘pidgin’ and
Indian-English, and so on. And the
English was a problem for some (“the
slightly negative things for me were some of the language which I found hard to
grasp” – MarkT), although not for all: “I
struggled with the ‘pidgin English’ at the start, but let it flow over”, as
Willm put it; or as Richard said “a lot
of the language was unclear, but I didn’t let that bother me much (very similar
to the Scots book we read (Sunset Song) where one has to let the language ‘wash
over’ and pick up the gist of what the words mean, and I didn’t find that it
detracted from the overall experience for me) but I wasn’t clear that it was
necessary.” ChrisB agreed, and even
argued that this was a strength of the book: “And so to the language. Some will be irritated by the vast array of
lascar sailing terms and Indian expressions and words. A someone who has
visited India several times, some of these eg Nob Kissin Baboo’s speech were
very recognisable. This was a little like the Scottish book (Sunset Song). You
just have to go with the flow and get a sense of the meaning of the words
rather than worry if you have understood every one. This incredibly varied use
of language added hugely to the richness of the work.” The research also threw up some queries – for
example, MarkT said: “there was lots of
references to losing caste, and it would have been interesting to know more
about that -I thought you were born with a caste?”.
On the other hand,
Steve (who had not completed the book by this stage) said that both “the language and the historical research is fascinating”
and that he very much liked “the depth of
detail here about the clash of cultures and how incongruous the outcomes are;
and how language changes and how locals change to accommodate these new cultures”.
Yet another area was
India, and how India treated its people (at that time, and still now). As Richard said, “I generally like books set in India, as there is so much that I can
relate to, and this (although I have never been to Calcutta, and the India that
it represents is a far cry from the one I know) is no exception – there is much
about the varied people, the social relationships, the Indian-English, that is
still remarkably similar”, and ChrisB: “liked
the rich descriptions of India, the river and the sea and the journey of both
people and ship through them. This provides an intensely visual, aural and
olfactory environment for the story”; or Andrew – “the book showed the extreme cruelty, counterbalanced by huge resilience. The dreadful poverty, relentless brutality,
the callousness, the thoughtlessness”. MarkT also found much of interest in
the India as described in the book: “It
was interesting the description of how opium destroyed people and whole
communities. The poor people having to grow opium and nothing else was very
sad. Burnham was a character I got annoyed with and despised. His justification
of his opium trade operation, with his religious justification was something
else. His justification of his ‘relationship’ with Paulette with biblical
texts was something else as well, and I felt for her. The corruption in the
court, Neel being tried by Burnham’s friend, to take all his land away. I
almost felt sorry for him”.
People thought that
his writing style was generally good: the descriptive passages were good (“the man can write! … his use of language was
almost a form of poetry”, as Willm said), and MarkT also liked the
descriptive elements: “I liked Deeti and
her relationship with the women migrants - this was well described. The prison
with the shit for Neel was well described, and the bit where the other
prisoners realised he could read and write and how that managed to get him
things from the other prisoners was very interesting, and it reminded me of my
brother’s experience when he was in a Indian prison covered with shit - he
taught the other prisoners how to play chess and read a bit, and they respected
him, gave him things, and did not beat him up … I enjoyed the wedding bit on
the ship, and I remembered bits of that from my brother’s recent wedding, such
as the turmeric paste”.
On the other hand, as
MarkW noted, “a huge percentage of the
book was exposition – the amount of the book devoted to exposition was enormous”;
and as Mark suggested, that is OK in a trilogy, but not if one reads a 500 page
book as a stand-alone one – “lots happened
in the last 100 pages!”. Willm also
noted that the author telling us from the outset that some characters had a future
undermined (or in some way mitigated against) the awfulness of their
experiences.
So, all in all, an interesting
set of views!
Richard Velleman
June 2018
