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Read Magic Seeds (2005)

Magic Seeds (2005)

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Rating
3.08 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0375707271 (ISBN13: 9780375707278)
Language
English
Publisher
vintage

Magic Seeds (2005) - Plot & Excerpts

I chose this book because of the title, not realizing that it is a sequel to HALF I LIFE which I did not read. To be fair, I can't give this a just assessment. Suffice it to say, I couldn't get all the way through it. The idea of magic seeds is based on the magic of being able to produce a raceless society through miscegenation.From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. At the end of Half a Life, Naipaul's previous novel, Willie, a young Indian in late 1950s London, travels to Africa. At the beginning of his new novel, Willie is in Berlin with his bossy sister, Sarojini. It is 18 years later. Revolution has uprooted Willie's African existence. Sarojini hooks him up with a guerrilla group in India, and Willie, always ready to be molded to some cause, returns to India. The guerrillas, Willie soon learns, are "absolute maniacs." But caught up, as ever, in the energy of others, Willie stays with them for seven years. He then surrenders and is tossed into the relative comfort of jail. When an old London friend (a lawyer named Roger) gets Willie's book of short stories republished, Willie's imprisonment becomes an embarrassment to the authorities. He is now seen as a forerunner of "postcolonial writing." He returns to London, where he alternates between making love to Perdita, Roger's wife, and looking for a job. One opens up on the staff of an architecture magazine funded by a rich banker (who is also cuckolding Roger). Willie's continual betweenness—a state that makes him, to the guerrillas, a man "who looks at home everywhere"—is the core theme of this novel, and the story is merely the shadow projected by that theme. Sometimes, especially toward the end of the book, as Willie's story becomes more suburban, there is a penumbral sketchiness to the incidents. At one point, Willie, remarking on the rich London set into which he has been flung, thinks: "These people here don't understand nullity." Naipaul does—he is a modern master of the multiple ironies of resentment, the claustrophobia of the margins. In a world in which terrorism continually haunts the headlines, Naipaul's work is indispensable.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.From Bookmarks Magazine:Half A Life (2001) might have been better been left without this sequel, which ruffles reviewers’ feathers as only a grand old man of literature can. Though his trophy shelf holds a Nobel Prize, his past accomplishments buy him little sympathy. In fact, it’s often difficult to tell if critics are more put off by Magic Seeds or their appraisal of Willie Chandran as a mouthpiece for Naipaul’s politics. For an author whose greatest works have a heavy dose of autobiography, this reaction is not surprising, though it makes one wonder whether critics are reading the novel or dissecting the author. In the end, one hopes the unlikable characters, implausible plotting, and general fog of pessimism are what doom this book, not critical disappointment in Naipaul.

Coming across this book was kind of an accident. At Calabash, Derek Walcott debuted a poem in which he called Naipaul a mongoose and criticized him for abandoning a Caribbean identity and solidarity with Afro-Caribbean populations. Naipaul was born in Trinidad of Indian heritage. (The mongoose is an animal brought to the Caribbean from India by the British). Anyhow, this made me want to read Naipaul who like Walcott is a Nobel Prize winner. Everyone says "don't read the last book," but I was at Bookophilia and this one only cost $345 J and I'm broke like a joke so "Magic Seeds" it was! I actually enjoyed it. The main character is on a quest for identity and ideals, and he joins a revolution in India. The book, for me, was sort of a cross between Voltaire's "Candide" and Nabokov's "Lolita" in that the main character is sort of perverse yet comic anti-hero and the story is in many ways as absurd as it is realistic. Although the narrative is dry and stiff at the beginning, it gets better. "Magic Seeds" is actually the sequal to "Half a Life," which I haven't read, so I wonder how my reading might have changed if I read the first one. Here is an excerpt from Walcott's poem (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/...Walcott's WordsAn extract from 'The Mongoose'I have been bitten, I must avoid infectionOr else I'll be as dead as Naipaul's fictionRead his last novels, you'll see justwhat I meanA lethargy, approaching the obsceneThe model is more ho-hum than DickensThe essays have more biteThey scatter chickens like critics, buteach stabbing phrase is poisonSince he has made that snaring stylea prisonThe plots are forced, the prosesedate and sillyThe anti-hero is a prick named WillieWho lacks the conflict of a Waugh or LawrenceAnd whines with his creator'sself-abhorrence

What do You think about Magic Seeds (2005)?

This is the most depressing book I've read since Revolutionary Road, which led me down a 5 year spiral to the bottom... I might not finish it. Well I did finish it, and it just got worse. I think not reading the prequel (Half Life) left me a bit lacking in insight regarding the main character, but that said, Willie is a cardboard presentation - just a vehicle for Naipaul to push out his angry, cranky politics and disregard for the working class and human struggle. So I probably won't go out looking for more Naipaul, but it is well-written, decently structured book. It had to be for me to get through it. Anyway, it is what it is - two stars.
—Adam

Magic Seeds begins in far distant Germany where the distraught and confused protagonist, Willie Chandran, is trying to come to terms with his identity. Chandran – a figure who I believe represents the 20th century Indian emigrant – has suffered from a broken marriage. He lives with his sister, a progressive, neo-liberal. On her urgings, Chandran takes up the cause of the lower caste in India. He decides to join the underground struggle. His journey to India and the initial contact with the underground is typical of a new acolyte; fervor, zeal and self-convincing monologue at every hurdle.Like Kafka’s many stories, Naipaul’s Chandran keeps treading the path of failure or gloom. Naipal paints an unflattering picture of the ‘freedom struggle’ and he is careful not to name this struggle.Despite the political overtures and the skepticism reserved for grass root guerilla movements, Naipaul insists that he is devoid of political leanings. Having grown up outside India, Naipaul says be belongs to the same class of ‘floating man’ that Willie Chandran belongs to. The book is a very trying affair to read. If one is not acquainted with Naipaul and the India he describes, one is bound to give up reading by the fourth chapter. The long convoluted prose is a sure put off as much as the naïve character that Chandran evolves into. “The more I saw myself getting into a mess, the more I would have pressed on,” says Chandran in Magic Seeds and this succinct line evokes pity at first but plain irritation by the end of it. Read the full review at The Sussegad Life
—Newton L

Hmm. What to make of this one? I guess it is sort of a continuation of another novel which I haven't read. Maybe that would have helped to ground it some. It's an odd book, in that there isn't much plot. I guess that's the point? Willie is just floating along, going in whatever direction someone points him in. In the process, he comes to terms with immigration, modernization and class differences in England, his home--of sorts. It's an interesting novel--well, no. The novel is a little slow. But there are bits of insights that Willie and his friend Roger share that are very thought provoking. The title, Magic Seeds, gives the whole novel structure, but I didn't figure that out until the last quarter. So, I think this book is probably much better than I give it credit for, but I'm not inclined at the moment to reread it and get to the goods. This would probably be a good book club book because you could get a lot of discussion out of it. But as something to read alone, it's a hair overwhelming.
—Isabel

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