Sea of Poppies (2008)

Well, its a bit of a penny dreadful isnt it? The book it reminds me most of is Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger - its very much written to the same formula. Find a vanished aspect of colonialism, in Unsworth's case the slave trade, for Ghosh its the opium trade, and you can construct a narrative thread that brings together a motley cast of mutlicultural characters. Even better if you can grasp the patois of the time - and Ghosh's use of maritime patois based on a mix of Malay, Hindi, Portugese and goodness knows what else, is the best thing about the book. The language feels right and helps you get into the characters' skins.

But the plot is predictable; people you think will fall in love, do so. People's who's fall is predicted, duly fall (finding humility in the process). Blaggards get their come uppance. True love overcomes obstacles. To the author's credit the plot rattles along and mostly sweeps you with it. But the author also has an irritating need to tie up all possible loose ends - characters who leave the narrative on p60 duly reappear on p400 - and how likely is it that you will find someone from your home village in central India on a ship from Calcutta to Mauritius for the sake of tying up a loose plot line? I find that sort of thing irritating

So overall entertaining in its way, but literary fiction its not ( )

I'm not quite sure what to make of this sprawling book. Sometimes it's filled with too many details and lists, and sometimes it's so full of pidgin as to be incomprehensible (the glossary is of little help). Yet, this tale of people from disparate backgrounds all setting sail for a new life with new stories is a lot of fun.

Major themes include racism, classism, gender roles, and plain old everyday greed. The British take over India to make money. In Sea of Poppies, it's the opium trade with China. Money is being made hand over fist until the Chinese decide to ban opium, which causes the usual uproar over open markets, for which the English want to go to war.

The ship Ibis was once a slave ship and is pressed into service for transport of people to the Mauritius Islands to work the sugar cane fields on British owned plantations. Mr. Burnham, one of the opium traders, stands to make a great deal of money from the labor of the migrants in the hold of his ship and the sale of opium to the Chinese.

It is on his ship, our large cast of characters meet. And, while their backgrounds and stories have been told before setting sail, it is on the Ibis that the meaning of those stories, and the clashing of them, begins to show fruit.

Sea of Poppies is a complex, sprawling story with an anti-climactic ending. Not meant to be read as a stand-alone, this first book in a trilogy is merely the opening salvo in what could be a rip-roaring tale. ( )

A marvelous, joyous explosion of language, of beautiful prose mixed with an inventive mix of the distinctive English/Indian mix spoken in Calcutta in 1800s. A vast Dickensian scope, loads of fascinating characters, and a whole slice of history based on opium. A vast new world for the reader to sink into. Not for everyone, but highly recommended for lovers of classic novels. ( )

This book is a fascinating story of a diverse group of people, mainly from the Calcutta region, linked in the opium trade of the early 1800s and brought together on a schooner taking them all to Mauritius. Of particular interest for me was the depictions of the lives of each of them and their associates under British rule. The various characters receive a sensitive portrait, including a high-caste peasant woman who depends on the crop of poppies she grows; an Indian aristocrat who loses his lands to the British and ends up in a British jail; a river boatman and the French woman he grew up with; a religious devotee who wants to become, and thinks he is becoming, the female god he adores; and an American seaman of mixed African and American heritage. Ghosh portrays each member of this diversity of class and culture with such care and detail that each has a unique setting and character, and all have depth and solidity. Even the minor characters, such as the British traders who show up from time to time are given detailed portraits, if less sympathetic ones. The fortunes of some rise, while the fortunes of others (the majority it seems) plunge.
Also fascinating are the evocative images he paints – the opening descriptions of the poppy fields, or the opium factory, or the shipboard life, are clear pictures in my mind and remain with me after reading. The extraordinary incidents of setting the sail on the jib masts, or the monsoon tidal bore that sweeps up the Hooghly River, stand out like the stories that Jack London told of life at sea.
Ghosh’s language is playful and gives another level of appreciation. He picks up words from a variety of local languages, as well as maritime slang, and if the meaning is not always obvious, the sense of it is. This gives a bit of a sense of the complex ethnic inter-relations in the region and the apparent ability of local residents to communicate effectively, if not perfectly, over language barriers. Puzzling, though, is what looks like a glossary at the back of the book, apparently compiled by one of the characters, in a highly idiosyncratic style with meanings that sometimes seem to be entirely made up. But then, that is the nature of explanatory texts – they reflect the writer’s bias and sometimes mislead. Perhaps, given the history of the region, that’s why it’s such a central preoccupation in the writing.
More than character or exotic colour, what gives the book depth is the sociological observation – the relations between castes, between the imperial powers and their various underclasses, between genders, between religions. It’s a fascinating tapestry of different themes that gives me a much richer picture of southeast Asian lives than the simple types I had before reading the book. And, I like the way that Ghosh has some characters articulate imperialist rationalizing, although he is completely convincing in the language and attitudes expressed. His characters are not stereotypes in a set game, but complex individuals who hold certain beliefs that were, I believe, well established in their time (and it’s not hard to find reflections of them today).
The ending is abrupt, but simply sets up the next volume in the trilogy. I look forward to reading the next books to follow the stories that are introduced in this book. ( )

I put this book on my to-read list after hearing an interview with Ghosh on the radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge (which is tied with Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me as my favorite radio show). The part of the interview I found most intriguing was the discussion about the language in the book, and that's a large part of what I enjoyed about the book itself. The amalgamation of Bengali, French, English, various other Indian and Chinese dialects, and 19th-century maritime patois made the reading somewhat slow-going at times, but I was surprised at just how much meaning I could glean from a sentence composed of words I couldn't necessarily define individually.

Ghosh's characters show their caste and breeding---or the caste and breeding they hope to project---through their choice of language. I enjoyed reading about the misunderstandings that happened because of the wide variety of languages the characters used, and how the characters choose to resolve these misunderstandings, if they choose to resolve them at all.

The ending was abrupt but fitting, and I find myself wanting to go back and read the book again to look for more clues about the direction the book will take. I did take some time to skim back through, but I've got too many other books to read to immediately re-read this one. It will be on my re-read list, though.

For the complete book review, please visit my blog, Imperfect Happiness. ( )