(no subject)

[skygiants]

Often when I read a archival dual-timeline book (is that the right phrase for these? surely there's something more pithy that I am forgetting) about someone in the present day discovering the secret history of someone in the past through letters or diaries, I find myself extremely compelled by the historical storyline and sort of bored by the present-day storyline. However, with Shubnam Khan's The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years, the opposite was the case -- I thought the present-day narrative was cool and compelling, while the historical narrative made me increasingly annoyed.

In the present day, adolescent teenager Sana and her father Bilal move into a sinister once-glamorous mansion on the South African coast that has been converted into crumbling apartments. Sana is extremely haunted by the mysteries and potential ghosts of the house, and also more directly by the resentful ghost of her dead twin sister who's been following her around making her life miserable her whole life.

As Sana starts uncovering the secrets of the building, she gets to know the other inhabitants -- mostly elderly members of South Africa's Indian diaspora community -- and gets invested in their stories, as well as discovering the diary of a woman who lived in the house in the 1920s and 30s, before its Diary Related Doom.

I like Sana a lot; I like her story and her haunting and the little journal in which she notes down everything that her variously depressed neighbors have to say About Love and the community she forms with them. I do not much care for the diary and the past storyline that it relates, a deeply fairy-tale narrative about an eccentric wealthy Indian man who decides to establish a factory in South Africa and build a Magnificent House there, complete with imported tigers. Then he falls passionately in love with one of his factory workers and decides to marry her, but his mother, first wife, and spoiled daughter all make his second wife's life a misery ... still, they are happy in their love! But, alas, the Doom approaches ....

'Look at this wealthy family; the mother in law was awful, the wife was selfish, daughter was spoiled, but the HUSBAND ... the husband is kind' is always a very difficult sell for me. I understand that this is fairy tale logic and I must leave my prejudices against eccentric wealthy men who move their miserable families to places they don't want to be and then build Magnificent Houses with Imported Tigers at the door. Still, I could not warm to this man and I could not warm to the Great Love that's at the center of the book. I wish there had been an option for her to leave him and run away with the djinn.

(As indicated in the title, there is a djinn. As indicated in the title, he's mostly just sadly chilling.)

Anyway, that aside, it's a lovely haunted fairy tale of a book, so if you have more tolerance than me for This Man you may well like it better than I did!

Comments

[sovay]

I wish there had been an option for her to leave him and run away with the djinn.

Definitely read A.S. Byatt's The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (1994). Also possibly watch Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022), which I only say "possibly" because I haven't seen it, but the djinn is Idris Elba (and the present-day frame is Tilda Swinton).

[larryhammer]

I can imagine ways in which putting Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton together on screen would go horribly wrong, such as if they get criminally underused, but I still imagine it'd be nice to watch them if not the story.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, fascinating that you found a dual timeline book of this sort where the modern timeline is more interesting than the past timeline that Modern Character is discovering through archival materials! Like you, I generally find it the other way around. Sometimes the author manages to make them more or less equal, like A. S. Byatt's Possession, but it really leans into The Joy of Research Discovery in a way that many authors don't manage.

[sophia_sol]

hmmm this sounds deeply irritating in what could have been a very cool book

[lokifan]

Hmm. Sounds interesting but same, I just can't get on board with 'all these women are terrible, the patriarch is the nice one!' I know it's got djinns and ghosts but there has to be some level of realism.

[lirazel]

Often when I read a archival dual-timeline book (is that the right phrase for these? surely there's something more pithy that I am forgetting) about someone in the present day discovering the secret history of someone in the past through letters or diaries, I find myself extremely compelled by the historical storyline and sort of bored by the present-day storyline.

SAME. I always care 97% about the historical timeline and 3% about the modern one. I always find myself asking, "Why didn't they just write a historical novel? They are not A.S. Byatt!"

'Look at this wealthy family; the mother in law was awful, the wife was selfish, daughter was spoiled, but the HUSBAND ... the husband is kind' is always a very difficult sell for me.

Right???