Ms. Hen reviews Travelers

Travelers

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Counterpoint

1973

Ms. Hen picked up this book at a Little Free Library in Melrose, Massachusetts. She chose it because she had read other novels by this author. She couldn’t remember them in detail, so she poked through her blog and found the reviews she had written for them. She wrote that the other books tended to drag in places. When she read the past reviews, those novels came back to her.

Ms. Hen thinks that TRAVELERS is more to her taste than the others that she has read by Prawer Jhabvala. She thinks that it is paced better and is not as boring as the other two. She didn’t know why she picked up the book if she didn’t love the other two, but sometimes she can’t remember everything she reads. She tends to recall things that are visceral and strange, and the other two novels are not like that for the most part.

TRAVELERS is about four people who are traveling through India: Lee, Raymond, Asha, and Gopi. Lee is a young American woman. Raymond is a British man older than Lee. Asha is an older Indian woman. Gopi is a young Indian man. Different short chapters are told from each character’s perspective. Lee likes to travel around and not have an agenda; Raymond has an apartment that he furnishes with beautiful Indian handicrafts, Asha tries to recover from her husband’s loss with sensual living, and Gopi is a young man who attaches himself to Raymond, not knowing Raymond’s true feelings.

The characters move around each other and they try to discover what they want from India and also life. Raymond likes Gopi, then Gopi likes Lee, and after that Asha and Gopi have an affair, and then Lee situates herself in the midst of a cult and gets too involved with a cult leader.

The aspect of this novel that Ms. Hen enjoyed that did not come through in the other novels was the wry humor. Ms. Hen thought this novel was funny in the beginning; she thought the characters were ridiculous in their fascinations and obsessions. But the novel becomes violent, and after that depressing, and though Ms. Hen did laugh quietly in the beginning, toward the end, she felt sorry for the characters. She didn’t quite cry, but she felt pathos for them. This novel took her through the spectrum of feelings, and that rarely can happen while reading a book. Not for Ms. Hen anyway, and she imagines it does not happen for everyone often.

The characters talk about what India can do to people, and how it can change them. Ms. Hen understands that, because even though she has never been to India she knows how a place or an experience can help a person see the world in a different way.

A lot of this novel is about journeys that travelers can take, spiritual journeys, or journeys though love or pain. Prawer Jhabhala writes about gurus a lot and how phony ones can be detrimental. Ms. Hen liked this novel, because it took her through the gauntlet of emotions, and she enjoyed reading about the characters and how problematic their lives are, like everyone’s, because nobody is perfect, and nothing in this world ever will be.