Red: An Alphabet

by I.Allan Sealy

Billed as an alphabet, and narrated by the nameless 'N', Red introduces us first to N's friend, Zach. In St Petersburg for a music festival, Zach encounters the red-headed Aline in the Matisse Room at the Hermitage and is immediately bewitched. The two fall in love as quickly as they fall into bed and it seems that nothing can keep them apart. But other characters also appear between the a gang of six black-shorted, grease-smeared, soot-smudged men, who take what they want, stealing money (and, on one occasion, a piece of art) from homes of the rich; a girl who tends pigs, and wants to keep what is hers; a workman whose wants are few, but with devastating consequences. Even aspects of N's own life are his awkward relationships with his teenage daughter and her American mother. As these stories overlap and entwine, Red is revealed as a vibrant, violent a love story and a story about the love of art, about life imitating art, about the end of love -- and the end of life.

Genres: Fiction

Hardcover

First published March 17, 2006

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 1 out of 5]

An overly ambitious()? 'arty' tale about red the colour intertwined with a story in and around the modernisation of India and classic art… I think? What? Well since I read this over 10 years ago, and am now only adding a full review of sorts to Goodreads, I only have my initial one sentence review to go on. In cases where I cannot recall a book at all, they have been universally books I didn't enjoy.

Tarun Surya's Goodreads review begins with 'Sealy's works are not a light read. They require you to engage with both what is written as well as what is implied.'... from which I surmise that if I better engaged with what was written and the implications thereof, I would probably have enjoyed, and indeed understood the book a lot better.

[Audrey Coutinho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really know how to review this book. There was a lot of art and music and robbery. It was written in that confusing way where you don't really know whether the narrator is part of the plot or whether he's imagining the entire thing. But all of it was really interesting, the intertwining of art and real life, the moving back and forth between St. Petersburg, Dehradun and New York. I am waiting to read his greatest work, Trotter-nama.

[Tarun Surya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sealy's works are not a light read. They require you to engage with both what is written as well as what is implied. Red is filled with references to paintings that are impossible to understand unless you actually see the ones he is referring to. And as with The Everest Hotel, the narrative swings from being an internal monologue to a traditional narrative. Read only if you want to dive deep into it and not just wet your feet.