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 nothing about this, or that he was with her in the Bibigar Gardens before the attackers arrived. Miss Manners also refused to give evidence because she felt it would bring a great deal of trouble to Hari Kumar as the English community were intolerant of personal relationships between Indian men and English girls.
The District Superintendent, Ronald Merrick, also had an interest in Miss Manners so he was determined to find Kumar guilty one way or another. On the night of the arrests, all the arrested men were subjected to brutal treatment but protested their innocence, although they new they would be put in prison whatever they said. By 1942 Merrick had obtained a transfer into the Army and been sent away from the area which ought to have given him a fresh start, but the English community in India at that time was tightly knit, and it wasn't long before people started putting together pieces of the puzzle and discovering the part he played on the night of the riots.
Daphne Manners found she was pregnant a few months after the attack and hoped it would be Hari's child, but whoever the father was, she was determined to keep it. Sadly she died in childbirth and her elderly aunt was left to raise the baby. The presence of the baby deterred a lot of English women from associating with Lady Manners, but a young woman called Sarah Layton sees this as unkind, and visits her when the two familys are staying in adjoining houseboats on a river. It is after this visit that Sarah becomes aware of Ronald Merrick and gradually, other characters from the fateful night swing back into the picture and many details about the arrests are discussed (at length!) by a new set of people.
In reality, no one would get the opportunity to talk at such length without interruption unless they were giving a lecture, but in the interests of understanding the finer points of the case, it's important that you don't let that bother you. The two books so far have been like watching an artist begin with a sketch and then gradually add more detail and colour until there is nothing that you can't see clearly. It's a challenging read, but I haven't been put off, and as soon as I can get my hands on Book 3, I will read that too (and that looks like another 500 pages!)
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