Monday, December 03, 2018

BOOK REVIEW: FAR FROM THE EAST END by Iris Jones Simantel.



Image: amazon.co.uk

It is a compelling and layered account of the childhood and adolescence of a young girl growing up during World War II. What distinguishes this book from many other biographies is the candid yet casual trajectory of her highs and lows against a checkered, poverty-riddled backdrop, told in a wistful yet witty tenor. The importance of family and school in forming the emotional template of a child’s mind and preparing it for the journey of life is reinforced through the feelings of the narrator as she strives to express her struggle for a place and person/s to call her own. One cannot but identify at various points with the narrator as her adult retrospection is mellowed by attempts to analyse yet empathise with the constraints and considerations that were inescapable factors in her parents’ mediocre lives. Her rebellious rants against class are subtle yet stubborn in their understanding of how the best of potential in man can be subdued, stemmed and subjugated by a lack of love or lucre.

To generations born amidst war and strife, the book cannot but fail to touch a chord with its Cinderella undertones as the protagonist conquers pain and poverty to present a stolid façade to a judgemental society. However, it is to the author’s credit that at no point of time does the book either glorify poverty/war or directly descend into a pathetic critique of life and its general bleakness. Be it at home or at school or even later, at work, the protagonist finds enough variety or novelty around her to justify her renewed efforts to revitalise and review her own circumstances. Her adolescent awakening into sexuality and her unfortunate encounters with aberrations and perversions in this aspect of life is reviewed through the filter of maturity and even a certain level of detachment. Her preference of certain family members, her foster parents during the war and her future husband is so well scripted that it unconsciously yet subtly draws into it the sympathy of the reader. Through graphic description yet nuanced perspective, she resurrects in the topography of one’s imagination the violence, waste and horror of the Second World War which practically ripped London apart, literally as well as metaphorically.

As a vivid- almost at times visual- depiction of a life that shall surely inspire the individual in each of us, the book shall stay with me for a long time to come and perhaps, possibly help in the personal realization of a more generous perspective of life in the post-war age.

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