In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

The best thing about being an author - well, actually the best thing about being an author is being paid to sit around in my house making stuff up, which means that having had a late night last night I am writing this to you in an old smock, having not had a shower yet, or indeed achieved anything of note at all this morning, except gossiping with my sister on Skype. Living the dream, people. But one of the other really cool things about being an author is that you get sent free books all the time, many of which are rubbish, but some of which are good or even excellent. I prefer not to write about the rubbish ones, as it doesn't seem fair, especially as the books are often by debut authors who really don't need, as one of their sole bits of coverage, me slagging off their efforts. On the other hand it is a pleasure to flag up the excellent ones, and therefore, today, might I introduce you to In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin? (Memorise the surname, I am not typing it again.)

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a collection of short stories set in Pakistan, loosely linked around the character of KK Harouni, a wealthy landowner. The stories move around time, place and class, revealing aspects of his life and that of his family and his servants - and by extension, Pakistan itself - over the course of around thirty years. The stories are beautifully written, faultless in execution and tone, full of carefully-observed detail on individual characters, social behaviour and cultural norms, and framed by exquisite description of Pakistan's landscape. I was particularly moved by Saleema, the story of a doomed young woman who tries to save herself by an affair with an older servant in the household where she works, and A Spoiled Man, a brutal tale of casual violence meted out by the police on a sweet, innocent man.

I did, however, feel somewhat distanced by the short story structure. There is always a risk in a book of short stories that it's difficult for the author to inspire the reader's interest in each individual character and their fate. In this collection,
this problem is exacerbated by some repetition in themes: most Pakistani men, it is shown more than once, can only become wealthy through corruption; Pakistani women can only advance themselves by whom they sleep with. Demonstrating these points repeatedly through different characters and stories diminishes the impact, because it appears to stem from a paucity of ideas. It's also an incredibly depressing portrait of a nation, and I'm not sure that the author wanted all his readers to put down the book thinking "thank God I'm not from Pakistan."

Nevertheless, this is a stunning achievement, each individual story crafted to perfection by a writer of very rare skill. It's just that, put together in one book, I fear they are less than the sum of their parts.