A SHEPHERD’S PIE KIND OF BOOK

In times of recession, people turn to food reminiscent of their childhood. Macaroni and cheese, shepherd’s pie, etc. That’s a fact. Someone told me it once.

So it’s not surprising that in times of hard reading, I turn to favourite books from my youth.

I’ve just started Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. It’s a whopping 1474 pages. But the effusive reviews on the dust jacket mean I simply cannot NOT read this book. “….such writing reminds us that there are secrets beyond technique, beyond even style, which have to do with a quality of soul on the part of the writer …”

See? I have to read this book. The Guardian told me so.

But given it’s bigger than a block a cheese, I need easy, bite-size reads in between chapters. I need a shepherd’s pie kind of book that is mentally unchallenging and with a storyline as well-worn as a particular peach-fluffed, original Care Bear. And so I turn to Gordon Korman’s Bruno and Boots series.

Gordon Korman should be world famous. His series about two loveable rascals at a Canadian boys’ boarding school is utterly, simply, delightful. There are seven books in all. The first, This Can’t Be Happening At MacDonald Hall! he wrote as a 12-year-old for a school project.

By complete contrast, A Suitable Boy is set in newly independent India in the 1950s. It’s an epic novel intertwining romantic tales, domestic-wars, class feuds and politics. It’s not particularly heavy going. But my tired little mind occasionally yearns for something simpler. And then I turn to Bruno and Boots.

Bruno lets his roommate’s ant collection loose in the hostel. Boots makes his roommate think he has a tropical disease. As much as I love the sumptuousness of A Suitable Boy, there is one note it just doesn’t hit – warm fuzzy nostalgia.