Can you choose the right book for your best friend?

As a child my son had a collection of books gifted by fond mom with inscriptions written from locations ranging from Toronto to Thiruvananthapuram. This was my strategy to comfort my boy when he was young enough to be dismayed — rather than delighted — by mom’s frequent travel work schedule. I reasoned that anticipating those exciting stories would made him think less about my leaving home and more about my return. 

Books can be magical indeed, especially in childhood. When my father’s transfer shifted me from my Tamil school in Madras to a convent in Bombay, I found myself drowning in an alien language: how was I going to make sense of science, maths, history, geography — all taught in English? My despair created a mental block towards the new language.

That was when a friendly aunt read Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” aloud to me,  translating as she went along. Then she baited me with two beautifully illustrated volumes of English books. Six months later, no one could separate me from “Sherlock Holmes” and “The Three Musketeers”!  I wonder: would I have learnt English as quickly if she had given me an “English made Easy” manual?

Yes, choosing the right book is an art. Remember the dull volumes “conferred” as school prizes? Enough to make you rubbish the maxim “A jolly good book whereon to look is better to me than gold.” Nor does age bring safety. My poor father (a voracious consumer of action thrillers) was bewildered by Bhagavad Gitas and Upanishads among his 60th birthday presents. As a writer herself, my mother was used to something worse. Authors old and young sent their “literary  masterpieces”,  demanding her review. They clearly believed that this would be a treat for her.

I too have my share of books from nouveau authors asking for my “honest opinion”.  After making many enemies I learnt to send that “honest” opinion in disguise.  When a non-fiction writer I adored sent me his attempt at a novel, I wisely replaced my gut response of “Pathetic!”,  with a noncommittal “Great effort!”  On similar occasions I have found “Never read anything like this before!” or a monosyllabic “Best!” to be safe bets.  Recipients always see them as applause.

As a journalist I have had the privilege of interviewing well-known writers and receiving autographed copies of their work.  But how disappointing to get from no less a personage than sci-fi trail blazer Isaac Asimov, not his famous Foundation trilogy, but a turgid novel he co-authored with Robert Silverberg, possibly dredged from a pile of unsold stock? Or to get “Baby”, his play exemplifying the theatre of cruelty (a glorious flop on the stage!) from Vijay Tendulkar, with the pawky remark, “You won’t like it.”  He was right. I didn’t.

With the very best intentions your friends can make bloomers, giving you what they think will “improve” your mind, rather than what you enjoy. An old friend gave me a book on the art of living with the assurance,  “This will change your life!” You know you will never turn those pages.  An old school mate marked our reunion with “Yoga for Asthma”.  I could hardly tell her, “I don’t have asthma, my daughter does, and she’s going to hate this stuff more than I do.” So I thanked her with a smile of love for our shared memories. 

Of course, dear ones don’t always disappoint you. I had talked glowingly of “Il Postino”, a film about a naive postman who makes friends with Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.  My sister-in-law took the trouble of finding for me Antonio Skarmeta’s novel on which it was based.  

More often, the best books are gifted not by people who love you, but those who listen to you.  After a chat about Djokovic winning Wimbledon last year, my husband’s friend thoughtfully sent me “Open”, Andre Agassi’s autobiography, which has given me hours of pleasure. Someone I met at a casual get together introduced me to Bruce Chatwin - handing me his dog-eared copy. Chatwin’s haunting prose continues to make the unknown known to me. 

Knowing my occasional  nerdish side only too well my daughter got me AS Byatt’s “Possession”, which spins a postmodern meta-fictional narrative of young lovers and investigative scholarship, along with the secret love story of two fictional Victorian poets, recreating their intimate correspondence and their “poems” with an astoundingly inventive mimicry.

My son brings books on periodic visits from London, probably using my old ploy of focusing on his arrival rather than departure. This time it is a Robert Galbraith Cormoran Strike whodunit with these words on the flyleaf, “Ma, the art of giving books is all about knowing what the recipient wants to read, not needs to read.”

Author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist