Reviews

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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blueskygreentreesyellowsun's review

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4.0

The modern story weaves perfectly with the past story. Lovely.

paul_cornelius's review

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3.0

I came to this novel because of the Greta Scacchi/Julie Christie film made in 1983. It has always been memorable and every eight or nine years I put it up on the screen and watch it again. Jhabvala's book, however, doesn't measure up to the quality of the film, whose screenplay she also wrote. It simply falls flat, being far too talky and lacking in all those layers of imagery the film pulled off. The desolate hot plains leading to the Nawab's palace, the enticing sense of comfort of Douglas and Olivia's bungalow, or even the cold snowy inclines of the Himalayas at film's end. Heat and Dust, I think, was the best film that Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala ever produced. Never again would they achieve such formal complexity or avoid the cloying sentimentality that absolutely pollutes films such as Room with a View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day.

It is nearing fifty years since Jhabvala published Heat and Dust in 1975. That is almost as much a difference in time as the distance between the book's publication and its "past" setting in 1923. Yet, as the modern story, set in the early 1970s, takes place, it seems much closer and not too much different from today, 2022. So many of its discoveries align with the same situation a contemporary heroine might face. And they seem utterly alien to the 1923 world of the British raj and Olivia and her colonial administrator husband. That world exists in a romantic haze, compared to the dirt and squalor which surround the modern story. And what is the story? Well, it's about the modern quest to discover who you are, where you come from, and how much you have in common with those that precede you. Good and interesting notions. But all done much more successfully in the film than this novel. In another decade or less, I'll probably take out Heat and Dust, the movie, and watch it again. I'll never get the enthusiasm to read once more through the novel.

jackirenee's review against another edition

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3.0

I read this book as part of my Birth Year Reading Challenge as it won the Man Booker Prize in 1975. The award supposedly goes to the finest fiction, and I have to tell you, I am stumped.

This was not a horrible read, in fact is had great potential. However, had I not listed this as part of a reading challenge, I would have walked away from it in a heartbeat. I felt like the story was getting somewhere, only to realize I only had 20 pages left to read. And it never did go anywhere.

Regardless of whether or not this book has won a prestigious award or not, I am certain there are far better books set in India than this.

martialia's review against another edition

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3.0

A little treat of a book where nearly everyone was both likable and not.

paulataua's review

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4.0

Two stories of women whose journeys to India are separated by half a century. One, Olivia, in the later later colonial period in the 1920s, the other, an unnamed relative in the 1970s, who sets out to find out what happened to Olivia. It says much about colonial attitudes and about how experiences can change someone. A short but satisfying read.

favvn's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'm already biased in having seen the film adaptation several times before, so it's safe to say I enjoy the book as well. I love the use of parallel and the swapping of timelines. It's neat to read a passage about Olivia only to have it mirror the current experience of the book's narrator or diverge from it, as happens later.

(Almost as if the narrator wants to correct past wrongs so to speak? Or to show how she--unlike Olivia--was freer to choose to keep her pregnancy, unlike Olivia caught in the question of paternity, infidelity, and the ensuing ostracization necessitating an abortion.)

It's also neat to read this after A Passage To India because both books take on criticizing the British Raj but in different ways. Forster covered the whole messy spectrum of what British colonial rule did to India through the trial of Dr. Aziz and the impact on the local community be they British or Indian. Prawer focuses on how stifling the colonial rule was for a handful of British and even then only two people (Harry and Olivia) were really caught between India and Britain.

And, as an aside, much like A Passage To India before it, Heat and Dust is also gayer in book form compared to the film. (Not to say that a viewer can't put Harry and the Nawab's relationship together from moments shown in the film but Ivory cut things down for the runtime and you miss out on the messy details of jealousy between Harry and Olivia and that added side to how out of place Olivia feels.)