I read The House on the Strand again today... it truly is magnificent... the grandeur is awe-inspiring. The sheer audacity of her... to think she could pull off a stunt like that! Multiple, multi-layered story-telling is a very, very hard technique to bring off successfully... and she doesn't even attempt her tracks in parallels... she coalesces and blends and makes two wholes into one: it's like mom makes the extra roti... a little atta from this and a little from that... and there it is... the roti that should not have existed but does due to the pure genius of creation.
The colours are brilliant... even the winter-white has the sheen of a glassed-over lake. It's a monochromatic part of the earth - all greys and whites - landscapes and people. But how it sparkles in the moonlight!
A world so marvellously peopled by the reals and the caricatured with equal panache and equal claim to existence. Admittedly, it's a man's world that she sketches... but with so sure a perception, even if the hand be a trifle unsteady, that the monosexual environs seem as unquestionable as the aurora - a flickering, magical world of mirages waltzing with reality to the tune of Pan's pipe. And the music goes on - a prologue long after the last page has been turned... she writes third stories within each reader. I don't know if that's a good thing though. But let her caress you into believing. It's a little like living after all.
Read it preferably at a stretch on a rainy evening. No coffee.
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