Book Review: THE MURDERER'S APE (Sally Jones #2)

 

Title: The Murderer's Ape

Author: Jakob Wegelius

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Pages: 605

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Henry Koskela, Chief to Sally Jones, the gorilla he rescued, is arrested for the murder of Aphonse Morro. He has motive. It was Morro that had sent him on a misadventure that caused him to lose his beloved boat, the Hudson Queen, and their hard-earned savings. But Koskela has no way to prove his innocence.

Only Sally Jones knows that her Chief has done nothing wrong. That he did not seek to kill Morro. That Morro fell by accident. But what can an ape do? Particularly when powerful people are determined to keep him imprisoned forever.

Now Sally Jones is on the run from the powerful men who want to bring anarchy to Portugal. Luckily, she meets Ana Molina, a young woman with an angelic voice who works in a shoe factory. Soon Ana’s friends become the friends of Sally Jones, but danger is never far away from Sally Jones.

 

The story is told in the first person past tense PoV of Sally Jones, not Sally. Always Sally Jones. It is, in fact, being typed out by her on a typewriter, long after the incidents described in the book are over.

This book started well. I didn’t realise who the narrator was until the last line on the first page when she said that her fur is itchy with coal dust. As a character, Sally Jones had great potential. She is literate, she can type, repair stuff, play chess and she serves as first engineer on a ship.

 

As a rule, I don’t read fantasy, but this one was targeted at children and promised to be warm and fuzzy. So I made an exception. The characters were all sweet, but not really unforgettable. Sally Jones herself didn’t live up to her potential. The adversaries weren’t really evil, in keeping with the target audience. This is children’s fiction after all.

The writing was sweet, especially the scenes where Sally Jones meets the Chief after their prolonged separation.

The writer does a good job with the time period. Set in the early 20^th century, there are accordions, motor boats, steamers, typewriters etc. Illustrations of these would have helped young readers to get an understanding of older technologies.

But there was tremendous room for improvement. For the greater part of the book, the Chief was in jail, serving a sentence of 25 years in prison. Considering that the Chief and Sally Jones were the main characters, they both should have a greater role to play in the book. As it is, the story picks up the thread of the plot only with about 100 pages to spare.

With the Chief stuck in jail, Sally Jones is sent off on a grand adventure, heading off to Egypt and spending a long spell in India, beating a king at chess and being his confidante, but not really advancing the plot of the story. Given that the title of the book is The Murderer’s Ape, I thought that Sally Jones should have been shown to be doing more to get the Chief released.

It’s a fantasy after all. If the author could make her literate, able to understand English, why not get her to grunt some words? If she is good at “fixing broken things”, why not make her use that skill to enable the Chief’s release rather than spending time fixing broken accordions with nothing to break the monotony for the Chief. The poor guy spends years in prison.

Also, at 605 pages, it is much too long and the pace far too slow. Young ones are bound to lose interest in such a heavy tome. I do think the author could have done more to bring out the themes of love and friendship, loyalty and innocence. As it is, with Sally Jones travelling around the world, those themes get diluted a fair bit.

The illustrations, the grainy pencil sketches were charming, quaint and inviting. 

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.) 

Book Review: RED RAIN

Title: Red Rain

Author: Lara Bernhardt
Publisher: Admission Press
Pages: 304 pages
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐

 

Brace yourself, people, this is going to be a long one.

Olivia Montag, with a dead baby and a broken marriage behind her, flees to India from the US to escape her sadness. Flush with the promise of Eat, Pray, Love, she seeks to re-invent her life by volunteering as an English teacher in a school for the underprivileged in a village in Kochi, Kerala.

She begins to enjoy teaching, but then realises that as girls begin to menstruate, they are pulled out of school for lack of sanitary napkins and on account of prevailing superstitions. When she meets Mukesh, a man who has invented a machine to produce low-cost sanitary napkins, she is blown by its potential to create positive change and offers to buy the machines and help him set up a production unit in the village. But the going will not be easy.

Will Olivia give up in the face of opposition? Or will she stand up for the girls? And will she be able to get this crazy enterprise to work?

 

The book, written in the 3^rd person past tense PoV of Olivia, starts out with the right intentions. Olivia has the desire to do good, and the author wants to highlight the ills that prevail Indian society. A lot of the stuff she talks about is real, dowry problems, the desire for a male child, the superstitions associated with menstruation etc, all stem from a patriarchal mindset that pervades social customs. A lot of women do not have much agency when it comes to making decisions for themselves.

The book also gets some cultural bits right, when it talks about the head wobble that means yes, the slight jerk that means no, and the sideways jerk that means, go ahead.

 

The hero of this book is Mukesh, based on the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham, who actually did everything that is attributed to Mukesh here. If you want to know more about this real-life hero, look him up on YouTube or watch his brilliant Ted Talk.

 

Olivia is a character whose heart is in the right place. Her self-esteem has taken a beating and we see the development in her character arc. I also liked the fact that the focus remained firmly on her, and the romance wasn’t forced on us.

 

On the flip side, the other teachers remained flat. When they were gathered together, it was hard to tell who was talking. Of the minor characters, Olivia’s fellow teachers, only Aubra stood out for her jealousy, Chris for his helpfulness towards Olivia, and Watisha for how she counsels Olivia. Melanie and Delilah don’t stand out at all. Delilah quotes from books, but that has no impact whatsoever.

 

The prose was rather too simple and repetitive, especially when it came to Olivia’s past memories of her ex-husband, Scott.

I forgave the positive intentions that the author started out with, but large parts of this book were cringe-inducing. American audiences might love it, but I resented the blatant poverty porn and the faulty perception of my country through the lens of exotica.

Early on, Olivia watches flocks of green parrots flying overhead in Delhi of all places. People have lived and died in Delhi without seeing the sight that Olivia sees. Clearly the author’s research has been pathetic.
 
When Olivia first meets Chris, he palms off some coins to a taxi driver who is trying to extort money from Olivia under false pretences. When she protests, Chris mouths crap about “the severe poverty some of the people in this country grapple with, and the number who go hungry every day.” I wanted to reach into the page and slap his sanctimonious spirit right off his face.

The white man saving the brown skinned children from starvation with a few coins. Saviour complex much?

Incidentally, Chris’ heart bleeds for the dishonest taxi driver and his children, but with the vendors in the shops, he haggles, instead of paying the price they ask. Why? Don’t the vendors have kids that might be starving?

Then we have Olivia, who is stupid enough to fly halfway across the world to a country she has, like the author, done zero research on.

She sees “bare-chested women scrubbing clothing against rocks in a putrid gray-brown river.” The same river in which she sees “a dead carcass float by,” lest you assume the carcass is alive.

Incidentally, Kochi, the city in which this book is set, is in Kerala, the state with the highest performance on several indices such as health, education, literacy, law and order, public welfare etc. Again, zero research. The basic premise of the book, girls being pulled out of school once they began menstruating, would not apply to Kerala. It is the height of ridiculousness to suggest that Kochi doesn’t have good sanitary pads.

Zero research on descriptions. Olivia tells us there are “tropical trees surrounding the school on all sides.” Tropical trees in a tropical country. Who would have guessed?

The whole thing about women not driving is another example of lack of research. Not everyone drives in India. That’s because cars are expensive, and not everyone can afford to buy one, but it’s also because the public transportation system is reliable and cost-effective and serves people’s needs well. A vehicle of one’s own isn’t a priority.

One of the characters, a British woman named Aubra, says, “This culture doesn’t accept women drivers. People would shout at us. Other drivers would be aggressive and maybe even try to run us off the road.” What bull crap! This is an example of reputation maligning.

There were around 429 thousand driving licenses issued among females across the Indian state of Kerala in fiscal year 2019, the highest in India. The total newly issued driving licenses in Kerala was over 10.5 million that year, out of which 14.9 percent were for women. Where did the author come up with the stupid information that she forced into Aubra’s mouth?

The teachers talk about taking a tuk-tuk. The right word, used everywhere in India, is autorickshaw. Tuk-tuk is what these vehicles are called in Thailand.

The food suffers in a similar fashion. Ms Vanya’s culinary skills never produced idli, dosa or sambar, the most well-known foods in South Indian cuisine and the staple diet of people there. Instead the narrative only mentions bland cauliflower, peas and potatoes cooked together, along with rice, dal and chapatis. Indian food is known for its diversity; these poor characters have been shortchanged. Again, meat isn’t “less readily available,” in India, least of all in Kerala which loves its beef.

Exposing one’s legs would be frowned on in rural areas, but it wouldn’t be “completely taboo.”

In one scene, where Olivia is trying to put together a first aid kit, we are told that Indians don’t understand the word, bandages. Ms Bernhardt, India has one of the largest populations of non-native English speakers anywhere. This scene is ridiculous.

A minor character, Rahul, we are told, “laced his fingers across the paunch beneath his ample shalwar.” The right word is kameez, which means tunic. Shalwar stands for the loose pants worn as part of an ensemble. Also, men in Kerala wear the lungi at home. The shalwar kameez is worn by North Indians.

I can understand the culture shock but the false information is annoying. The very title, Red Rain, was forced. It had no direct link with the main plot. I suspect it was included to highlight the menstruation angle.

All in all, not a book that deserves to be recommended.

 (I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)