The Siege of Krishnapur

The Siege of Krisnapur was not the book that I was hoping it would be. I wanted a book about the British in India in which the British ones aren't the good guys; one that actually shows the damage we did and justifies the various uprisings that took place during the years of the Empire.  This book doesn't quite do that, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

J.G. Farrell's book tells the story of the Brits in the fictional Krishnapur leading up to and during the tine of the titular siege.  There's a bunch of fairly stereotypical period drama foder- romances, religion, disagreements about the causes of cholera- that kind of thing.

What I like about the book is thatb even though the characters are all fundamentally quite likeable, Farrell gives the audience enough distance to see why there would be mutinies.  At their core the British characters are all a little ricdiculous.  They are concern by fashion and The Great Exhibition- they constantly reaffirm that they are the more civilised and advanced race but do nothing to back up their claims. 

One of the beat examples of this is the funniest part of the book.  The Catholic Padre is trying to persuade Fluery (a young man finally starting to treat the siege as something more than a great adventure) of the existence of God using William Paley's argument for intelligent design.  He does this whill the pair are being attacked.  The whole thing is a great juxtaposition between the Church stating all life is sacred as it is designed by God and the immediate and actual need to kill to survive.  It is my favourite part of the book by a long way, mostly because it ends with the science that the Brits hild so dear being tamped down in a wonderfully ironic way.

There's quite a lot of good stuff about women running through The Siege of Krishanpur. Fluery's widowed sister Miriam is also caight up in the siege along with his romantic interest Louise Dunstaple, and Fluery has some opinions about how they should be behaving.  He believes, during an early dinner, that Lousie is behaving quite correctly in sitting quietly and not giving her opinion on the topic of 'progress' (what else).  Fluery believes that "a woman's special skill is to listen quietly to what a fellow has to say and thereby create the sort of atmosphere in which good conversation can flourish." Naturally, he approves of Louise. He applies simular standards to Miriam, becoming frustrated when he believes she is flirting with an older, married man.  What saves me from hating Fleury is what I mentioned earlier- Farrell's ability to make characters ridiculous.  Fleury is unable to regulate Miriam's behaviour because she raised him, he only believes himself to be the authority.  He can't even get her to stop calling him by the childhood nickname 'Dobbin.'  Miriam, in contrast to this, fully understands that as a Victorian woman she is expected to bend to the whims of a husband- recently widowed she intends to stay this way rather than obtaining a new man to tell her what to do.

I enjoyed The Siege of Krishanpur more than I thought I would.  It's not an absolute page turner but it's aolid abd it's funny. I still haven't got my bliatering critique of the British colonisation but I'm not really likely to- at least not from a British author, but I liked what I did get. I've been meaning to read sone of Farrell's work for quite aome time and this book has certainly whetted my appetite for the other two of hia that I have waiting for me further down The List.