WC111523 Criticize your favorite book, show or movie.

 

Criticize your favorite book, show or movie.

I have read The Far Pavilions numerous times. I read it over a summer when in college. Used it for a book report in World Literature. Read it again while getting a divorce and out of work. When I started teaching 7th and 8th grade, I told the story (you don't look away from kids at this age). I told it to my World History classes when covering India during the Raj. It's a marvelous book. The mini-series with Ben Cross and Amy Irving mangled the story beyond recognition.

Before the critique let me give you the story line.

Book one: Hillary Ashton Pelham-Martin is born in India. His father is an explorer charting the northern part of India. His mother miscalculates when she would deliver him as his father planned on being in a British canton when the time comes. She gives birth in a tent during a dust storm and dies of child bed fever. 

Ashton is given to a native woman who's lost her child to nurse, and she becomes his Ayah, (nanny).

They continue traveling but come down with Cholera. Only Sita and Ashton survive as she knows to not drink the water. She dresses him as a native and they travel south to the nearest cantonment. They get there just as the Sepoy mutiny breaks out and all Englishmen are being massacred.

Sita takes him back to the north to a small kingdom at the base of the Himalayas. Northern tribes in India have lighter skinned people than southern India. The mountains are called the Far Pavilions. She finds employment as a seamstress, and they get a hovel to live and survive.

Book Two: Sita and Ashok, his native name, are getting by. She kept all the papers from the caravan that document who Ashton is and buries them in the dirt floor of their home. 

The Rajah of Gulkote where they live outside the castle is celebrating the birth of a son and there is a parade with a feast prepared for the villagers. Ashok and Sita are watching when the parade comes by, and the Rajah's eldest son's horse rises up and is about to throw him. Ashok, who is working in stables, calms the horse and saves the young heir's life.

Sita and Ashok are brought into the palace, Sita becomes the ayah of a baby daughter of the Rajah, Anjuli, and Ashok becomes Lalji's playmate. 

The new son of the Rajah's is from a different mother, and she is wanting to get rid of Lalji so her son will be next in line for the throne.

Sita becomes a mother to Anjuli, who is ignored whose mother is dead, and she means nothing. 

Ashton and Anjuli become close, and they find a place in the palace overlooking the walls and look at the mountains. They dream of leaving the palace and finding a valley where they can build a home, raise sheep and goats and live in peace.

Ashok thwarts a number of attempts on Lalji's life over the next few years. 

Word comes to Ashok that those trying to kill Lalji are going to kill him as he's in the way. Friends in the palace help Sita and Ashok escape from the palace and they flee Gulkote.

Book Three: Sita and Ash start traveling south to find an English Cantonment. Sita gets ill and she gives him all the papers proving who his father is before she dies.

He travels to an English Cantonment; gives them the papers and is sent back to England to be reunited with his family. 

To cut this short he is a fish out of water in England. He makes it through his schooling and enters military service headed back to England to fight for the Raj. 

Young Ashton Pelham-Martin has something that is very valuable to the regiment. He speaks the language as a native and can blend in as a native.

He's given an assignment to escort a wedding party for two brides from one kingdom to another. He finds that one of the brides is Anjuli. He falls in love with Anjuli, delivers them to the other Rajah, sees they're married and leaves.

Then he finds out a year later that the Rajah, who was old, dies and the two Rani's he delivered will be Suttee, burned alive on the funeral pyre.

He goes back to save them but is only able to save Anjuli.

They get married, but the regiment is given orders to go to Afghanistan to establish a diplomatic mission.

In Afghanistan Ash is used as a native in Kabul, to let the mission know what's happening.

The mission is attacked and killed to the last man, but he survives as they think he's a native. 

Ash and Anjuli go to find their valley in the Far Pavilions.

This is a very involved story. It has a great love story, extended history of India, social and economic dynamics, and religious factions between Hindu, Muslim, Sikhs, and Christians.

Now the critique: When I first read the story and even most of the other times, I could read it word for word and devoured every page.

I bought a copy on Kindle. It had been quite a while since I'd read it and was looking forward to it again. I'd also become a writer and was surprised at how many errors were in it. Misspelled words, run-on sentences, that I'd never noticed. This was published in the 1920's or 30's. All copies available today are from 1978, and they didn't edit it? 

Most of all though, it was the lengthy descriptions of the countryside. Pages and pages of flora and fauna, describing the mountains, valleys, plateaus, clothing etc.

I found myself skipping over this stuff. I do that a lot now. Maybe I've lost the ability to appreciate long descriptions in my old age. The first time reading it I learned about the Indian subcontinent, and it was new and exciting. I still consider this to be my all-time favorite novel.