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  Book 3 of the Raj Quartet So, after already reading about 1,000 pages about two assaults on English women during the uprising of the Indian people in Mayapore in 1942, you may wonder what more the author Paul Scott can possibly have to say on the matter.  Well, this time the main focus falls on Miss Barbara (Barbie) Bachelor, who was a teacher in one of the Mission schools in Mayapore, but moved to the British army station at Pankot on her retirement.  She moved in 1939, so was not living in Mayapore at the time of the assaults, but took a very keen interest in any news relating to them as the elderly lady who had been beaten by a mob was a friend of hers from the Mission school. On retirement, Barbie lost the right to live in her accommodation but, just ahead of her final day at the school, she noticed an advertisment in the Ranpur Gazette placed by another older lady seeking a companion to share her bungalow.  The arrangement seemed heaven sent so Barbie wasted n...

  I'm having an enforced rest from working my way through Paul Scott's Raj Quartet because I couldn't find book three when I went to the library on Wednesday.  I picked this one up because it's by the same author as the A Man Called Ove, and that was one of those books that has stuck with me, so it seemed like a safe bet. Fredrik Backman has quite a distinctive writing style as he manages to deal with the darkest of subjects with a light touch that somehow doesn't diminish the impact.  His books are translated from Swedish, and the dialogue flows well without losing that directness that I associate with nordic people.  My Friends is set in an unnamed town on the coast of Sweden, and it neatly blends the stories of a group of people who were teenagers twenty five years ago with present day events happening to an eighteen year old called Louisa. Don't let the thought of so many teenagers put you off.  This is no tale of hoodies, fast food and smart phones, more a ...

Book 2 of the Raj Quartet   There are a couple of phrases that I would bet the author, Paul Scott, has never had occasion to use: 'to cut a long story short.....' and 'let me cut to the chase....'  Never one to keep an answer to a question to a few short lines when three pages will do, and it seems every character in the book has the capacity to talk at length on any given topic.  No thought is spared consideration and everyone is an amateur psychiatrist.  However, it somehow works and I was captivated for another 530 pages. The book is set in India in 1942 in the immediate aftermath of the events described in The Jewel in the Crown.  A young English woman, Daphne Manners, was raped by a gang of men on the night of a civil uprising, and by the start of Book 2, a group of young men have been arrested and sent to prison without trial.  The arrested men included Hari Kumar, who had been in a relationship with Miss Manners but she has persuaded him to say nothi...

 Book one of the Raj Quartet This is a novel that you have to commit to concentrating on because the level of detail is outstanding and every word counts.  It's over five hundred pages of finely typed print, so that high level of concentration has to be sustained over quite a few days.  I usually read a book in a week, but it took me two to read this one and it is just one of the four books that make up the Raj Quartet. It's set in India, 1942, which is right in the middle of the Second World War, and the country has been unsettled by the continued occupation by the British, and the idea of self-rule is gaining supporters.  The police and military are struggling to keep control of the population and British people are setting up contingency plans to establish places of safety in the event of an uprising. In late summer when the heavy rains began, two events happened in Mayapore that shook the British to their core.  The population had been gathering in numbers a...