The Calcutta Chromosome, Amitav Ghosh, 1/50
First post - I've picked up a lot of interesting recs from this community, but my first dozen or so books are going to be working through my own rather massive TBR pile, at least until I get distracted...
In the near future Antar, living alone in a crumbling New York apartment working as a cataloguer for an artifical intelligence network, finds an ID card for a business he used to work for, a card for a co-worker who disappeared in Calcutta in 1995. In that place and time period, Murgan (the co-worker) investigates the medical history of malaria, but he keeps bumping into an odd group of people who seem to know more about his research than he does. In the late 1880s, Elijah Farley, a British missionary with scientific training, visits a malarial research laboratory where the local assistants know far more about the disease than the British overseer…
The story twists between times, places and narrators, and it drew me along with it very successfully; the writing and the pacing all work well, and there are some great moments (I particularly enjoyed Urmila’s attempts to buy fish, which were vivid and frustrating and set up a large cast of distinct characters in a very small space. I had more problems were the overall McGuffin for the story, the Calcutta chromosome itself, and the ending, but I think much of these due to the type of story Ghosh is telling and my expectations about the story I wanted to read.
The Calcutta chromosome and the concept of anti-science both have the same problem for me, in that I can’t get them to work for me either inside or outside the world of the novel. I’m happy with concepts I consider impossible in the outside world if they make sense in a given story, but in this book they don’t - partly, this is because all the revelations about how and why these things work are given to Murugan, who is hypothesizing and unreliable and not directly involved, so his ideas are never confirmed, but also the anti-science proposed here appears to be science by a backdoor route rather than an opposition (using malaria to kill syphilis is in both concepts, for example) and the manipulation used doesn’t ever hold together for me (is it an experiment, to see how people behave, or part of their research, to force discoveries?). I also admit that I am twitchy about ultimate revelations involving any form of immortality, so that may have played into my problems with the Calcutta chromosome, but really my main problem with this is that during Murugan’s explanation I can hear someone’s hand waving so fast that I can almost feel the breeze. I actually have less of a problem with the idea of an infection that transmits biological traits than I do with the explanation given, so maybe this is a case where a lot less would have worked better.
The ending, I think, is a separate problem, and mine rather than the story's. Part of the point of the book is that things will not necessarily make sense until viewed in hindsight; groups of people in time contribute to the overall meaning but will not necessarily comprehend it. This ultimately applies to the reader (and writer) as well, and so the ending, where everything seems to be coming together, and things are falling into place but not yet *there* - and the book stops - makes perfect sense from this point of view. I can appreciate it and it makes sense, but it’s hard to get over my attachment to resolution. I think I will enjoy this bit more on a re-read, where there isn’t the disappointment at not finding out what happens.
Despite these comments I enjoyed the book a lot, particularly Ghosh’s skill at creating vivid and believable characters. I think I have The Glass Palace hanging around somewhere, and will probably try that next - The Sea of Poppies, which looks fascinating, appears to be the first in a series, and I’m not sure whether the rest are out yet.
In the near future Antar, living alone in a crumbling New York apartment working as a cataloguer for an artifical intelligence network, finds an ID card for a business he used to work for, a card for a co-worker who disappeared in Calcutta in 1995. In that place and time period, Murgan (the co-worker) investigates the medical history of malaria, but he keeps bumping into an odd group of people who seem to know more about his research than he does. In the late 1880s, Elijah Farley, a British missionary with scientific training, visits a malarial research laboratory where the local assistants know far more about the disease than the British overseer…
The story twists between times, places and narrators, and it drew me along with it very successfully; the writing and the pacing all work well, and there are some great moments (I particularly enjoyed Urmila’s attempts to buy fish, which were vivid and frustrating and set up a large cast of distinct characters in a very small space. I had more problems were the overall McGuffin for the story, the Calcutta chromosome itself, and the ending, but I think much of these due to the type of story Ghosh is telling and my expectations about the story I wanted to read.
The Calcutta chromosome and the concept of anti-science both have the same problem for me, in that I can’t get them to work for me either inside or outside the world of the novel. I’m happy with concepts I consider impossible in the outside world if they make sense in a given story, but in this book they don’t - partly, this is because all the revelations about how and why these things work are given to Murugan, who is hypothesizing and unreliable and not directly involved, so his ideas are never confirmed, but also the anti-science proposed here appears to be science by a backdoor route rather than an opposition (using malaria to kill syphilis is in both concepts, for example) and the manipulation used doesn’t ever hold together for me (is it an experiment, to see how people behave, or part of their research, to force discoveries?). I also admit that I am twitchy about ultimate revelations involving any form of immortality, so that may have played into my problems with the Calcutta chromosome, but really my main problem with this is that during Murugan’s explanation I can hear someone’s hand waving so fast that I can almost feel the breeze. I actually have less of a problem with the idea of an infection that transmits biological traits than I do with the explanation given, so maybe this is a case where a lot less would have worked better.
The ending, I think, is a separate problem, and mine rather than the story's. Part of the point of the book is that things will not necessarily make sense until viewed in hindsight; groups of people in time contribute to the overall meaning but will not necessarily comprehend it. This ultimately applies to the reader (and writer) as well, and so the ending, where everything seems to be coming together, and things are falling into place but not yet *there* - and the book stops - makes perfect sense from this point of view. I can appreciate it and it makes sense, but it’s hard to get over my attachment to resolution. I think I will enjoy this bit more on a re-read, where there isn’t the disappointment at not finding out what happens.
Despite these comments I enjoyed the book a lot, particularly Ghosh’s skill at creating vivid and believable characters. I think I have The Glass Palace hanging around somewhere, and will probably try that next - The Sea of Poppies, which looks fascinating, appears to be the first in a series, and I’m not sure whether the rest are out yet.