Guest review by Cindy Jefferies: BUDDHA DA by Anne Donovan

 

"I was hooked. Before I’d read the first half a page I knew I was going to enjoy the ride."

First published in 2001 for children, Cindy Jefferies found success with her Fame School series with Usborne Books, obtaining 22 foreign rights deals. Latterly writing fiction for adults as Cynthia Jefferies, her first title The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan was published in 2018, followed a year later by The Honourable Life of Thomas Chayne, set during the English Civil Wars, followed in 2019. Both titles are now available in paperback.

For some reason unclear to me I missed Anne Donovan’s first novel, Buddha Da, the first time around. It was published in 2003, but I didn’t come across it until I was recently away for a few days and found it in an Oxfam book shop.

I wonder if I did notice it when it was published but rejected it because it’s written in Glasgow vernacular? I enjoyed James Kelman’s How Late it is, How Late, but didn’t get on with Irving Welsh’s Trainspotting. Of course, reading the vernacular always demands a bit more effort from the reader. It’s difficult, now, to remember if it was the vernacular or the subject that put me off Trainspotting. Be that as it may, the premise of Buddha Da certainly appealed and I was happy to give it a go.

As a writer, where I find my reading is always of interest. Libraries and charity bookshops enable me to take a punt on half a dozen novels and to discover someone new to me that I love enough to seek out at full price in one of our wonderful independent bookshops. Anne Donovan is definitely now on my independent bookshop list.

So back to the vernacular. Some readers take exception to it. Done well, however, I rather enjoy it and in the case of Buddha Da it really lifted the novel to another level. Here’s the very beginning of the book.

“Ma Da’s a nutter. Radio rental. He’d dae anythin for a laugh so he wid; went doon the shops wi a perra knickers on his heid, tellt the wifie next door we’d won the lottery and were flittin tae Barbados, but that wis daft stuff compared tae whit he’s went and done noo.”

I was hooked. Before I’d read the first half a page I knew I was going to enjoy the ride.

Buddha Da is told by the three main characters. Anne Marie the daughter aged 12, Ma Liz, who works in the local doctor’s surgery and Da, Jimmy, a self employed painter and decorator. Their small family is like countless others, getting on well enough, working hard and enjoying a night out at the weekend. Never in a dozen lifetimes would it have occurred to Jimmy’s family or friends that he would set foot in the local Buddhist centre, but he does. It seems even less likely that he would go back time and again. He hasn’t even been to church for years. What’s going on with him?

This is a domestic novel that comes at one slantwise. There’s no wayward husband having an affair, no daughter getting into trouble; and yet, the family are thrown totally off balance. When Jimmy starts to give up some of the things that were an integral part of their lives, everything falls apart.

The story is funny, sad and sometimes thought provoking. Problems tend not to be solved, questions remain largely unanswered but I found it satisfying in an unexpected way, like much of life.

Buddha Da was Anne Donovan’s first novel, and was at the time shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Award. Taking note of those listings, perhaps you’ll enjoy it too.

Buddha Da is published by Canongate

More of Cindy's choices:

The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

Guest review by Katherine Roberts - CAVE IN THE SNOW by Vicki Mackenzie

Katherine Roberts’ latest novel, Bone Music, invokes the spirit of the 13th century Mongolian steppes to tell the story of Genghis Khan’s rise to power… no Yetis, but it does have wolves! Published by Greystones Press.

In 1976, many years before Buddhism became trendy in the West, a fishmonger’s daughter from the East End of London retreated to a cave 13,200 feet up in the Himalayas, where she spent the next 12 years of her life meditating with only the wild creatures for company. Her name was Diane Perry, though today she is better known by her Buddhist name of Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Cave in the Snow  is the fascinating story of Diane’s life up until 1998, when the book was published, by which time she had emerged from her cave with her new name to embark upon a fierce schedule of talks across the world to fund her new project: building a nunnery for young Buddhist girls. Happily, the funds were raised, and the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery now exists in the Kangra Valley of northern India, close to the seat-in-exile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Diane Perry’s lifelong quest for spiritual enlightenment resonates with me as an author. We spend months, sometimes years, in our metaphorical caves working on our writing projects with only our characters for company, and then emerge blinking into the world to talk about our published books. The book ‘called’ to me from a local charity shop bargain box, not because of its cover (which on my edition is strangely prosaic with its photograph of Tenzin Palmo, dressed in her Buddhist robes, standing beside what I think must be the Tibetan flag), but because of its evocative title coupled with the interesting blurb on the back. How could a woman raised in the East End of London in the aftermath of the Blitz survive alone in a cave in the Himalayas for so many years? Why did she feel the need to retreat there? And what did she discover during her long and lonely years of meditation?

In Tenzin Palmo’s own words, referring to a period when she worked at the Department of Employment to raise funds for her return to India prior to entering her cave: “I felt very sad - there were all these middle-aged guys saying ‘What have I done with my life?’ and young married people with mortgages, already trapped.” Authors also tend to view society like this, from the outside as detached observer rather than as part of the group, and it can be dangerous to look too long or too deeply at what actually matters in life. Shortly afterwards, Tenzin Palmo entered her cave, but not before carrying out a few essential renovations with the help of the locals to give it some proper walls and a door she could close against the elements and wolves. As she says in the book: “It was a very pukka cave.”

Tenzin Palmo did not write in her cave. She read her Buddhist texts and meditated in her box-bed, which was not big enough to allow her to lie down. She grew vegetables outside in the summer months, and - like St Francis of Assisi - was visited by the animals and birds of the mountains. She conversed with wolves, saw the prints of the elusive snow leopard outside her cave in the snow in the depths of winter, and also a huge footprint that may have belonged to the legendary Yeti. It seems she also survived possible breast cancer, and a serious eye infection. And, through all these hardships, she thrived.

It must have been a profound experience, and I kept wishing that Tenzin Palmo had written this book herself, rather than having to read her story secondhand. But Vicki Mackenzie has written a clear and faithful account based on her interviews with Tenzin Palmo, and part of the allure of a spiritual quest is the difficulty of capturing such a mystery in words. Perhaps the best any writer can hope to do is sketch down the bones, and leave it up to the individual reader to supply the flesh and the colour. If you are curious to know more, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is still teaching - see her website for details.

Cave in the Snow is published by Bloomsbury.