''The Diviners'', Rick Moody

Greetings from Calcutta! In my bid to go on holiday in the least likely tourist destinations in the world (Uzbekistan, until now, a worth winner) I am currently vacationing in Calcutta, most famous for having a Black Hole. For those history buffs out there, this is when they threw a bunch of Brits down a large hole. Great! In fact, from first impressions, it strikes me that Calcutta doesn’t really deserve it’s reputation – it seems to be (marginally) cleaner than New Delhi and not apparently poorer. Feel free to correct me; this is purely based on my 12 hours here so far. The 30 minute taxi drive to the hotel this morning though was a great reminder of what makes traveling here so fantastic, namely the entertainment value. In that half an hour I saw: a gaggle of orange-robed Buddhist monks, one of whom winked at me; hundreds of people at the side of the road brushing their teeth and washing their hair (my company must do great business here…); 30 foot long bamboo poles seemingly flying along the road but in fact on top of very small, very spindly bicycles; another bike with maybe 30 chickens attached to it by their legs; and a lot of competitive Haircare advertising (I only left the office 24 hours ago, I haven’t got into holiday mode quite yet). So far, so fun. I am now happily ensconced in a rather lovely hotel which will provide the needed wind-down for the next few days before it’s off up north to do some proper-people traveling. I will miss the hotel though and particularly my divine Indian Head Massage this afternoon; do pop in, next time you’re in the area.

I will make no attempt to segue into the latest Review then, as it’s really not relevant; I didn’t even read it on the plane (although my latest book, ‘’Buttertea at Sunrise’’ by Britta Das is much more on-topic, and I will try to write it up soon). It’s the story of a TV production house creating an epic mini-series, written in an epic style (see what he did there? See? See?). Yes, it’s rather pretentious, yes some of the writing style is ludicrous – particularly the first 30 pages describing sun rise around the world time zone by time zone – but after the first 100 pages I did get into it a bit given the hint of a plot. It is seen from the perspective of various different characters who interweave here and there, a bit reminiscent of ‘’English Passengers’’ by Matthew Kneale (which was, incidentally, far superior). On a tangent, the most persuasive review I ever heard was for Kneale’s novel – David Baddiel on the TV show of the Booker Prize Ceremony who declared that when he found out this was a long, heavy, historical novel with multiple narrators he thought it would be crap, but in fact it was really quite good. I had a peek on Amazon and the reviewers there hated The Diviners, but I found it mildly entertaining. Clearly I’m not The Voice of The People then. Another career ambition thwarted!