Le torri del silenzio

The Raj Quartet #3

by Paul Scott, Stefano Bortolussi (Translator)

Dopo Il gioiello della corona e Il giorno dello scorpione, il terzo capitolo del quartetto del Raj: il capolavoro di Paul Scott, definito il Guerra e pace anglo-indiano.
Barbie Batchelor, insegnante missionaria in pensione, viene accolta dall’anziana Mabel, decana della famiglia Layton, come ospite pagante al Rose Cottage di Pankot. Col passare del tempo, tra le due donne nasce una profonda amicizia. Ma Barbie, che ha origini modeste ed è ciarliera e maldestra, non viene accettata dalla buona società di Pankot, in special modo da Mildred Layton, madre di Sarah e Susan. Dal canto suo, Barbie è ossessionata dai fatti cruenti avvenuti in città: l’aggressione subita dalla ex collega Edwina Crane e la violenza carnale di cui è stata vittima Daphne Manners non smettono di riecheggiare nella sua mente. Nel frattempo, la seconda guerra mondiale è giunta alle sue ultime, amare giornate e il Raj britannico si sta sgretolando definitivamente. A Pankot le mogli, le madri, le figlie e le vedove degli ufficiali inglesi coinvolti nel conflitto attendono trepidanti la fine della guerra e il ritorno dei propri cari. Intanto il capitano Merrick, ferito durante un’incursione, dopo un lungo periodo trascorso in un ospedale militare e di passaggio in città, ha un lungo colloquio con Barbie. Sebbene appaia un consumato professionista, l’uomo è brutale e corrotto, ma nemmeno le sue macchinazioni possono arrestare il cambiamento che si sta avvicinando rapidamente e inesorabilmente, un cambiamento che sta minando sempre più il vecchio mito dell’invincibilità britannica…

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, India, Historical, Classics, Literature, 20th Century

535 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Paul Mark Scott was an English novelist best known for his tetralogy The Raj Quartet. In the last years of his life, his novel Staying On won the Booker Prize (1977). The series of books was dramatised by Granada Television during the 1980s and won Scott the public and critical acclaim that he had not received during his lifetime.
Born in suburban London, Scott was posted to India, Burma and Malaya during World War II. On return to London he worked as a notable literary agent, before deciding to write full time from 1960. In 1964 he returned to India for a research trip, though he was struggling with ill health and alcoholism. From the material gathered he created the novels that would become The Raj Quartet. In the final years of his life he accepted a visiting professorship at the University of Tulsa, where much of his private archive is held.

Reviews

[Candi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You are now native roses. Of the country. The garden is a native garden. We are only visitors. That has been our mistake. That is why God has not followed us here."

This third book in the remarkable Raj Quartet is bursting with metaphor. Barbie Batchelor, the principal character in this installment, likens the roles of the British and Indians in India to that of her companion’s cherished rose garden. At this particular juncture of the novel, Barbie is in the midst of a transformation of sorts, as she comes to realize that her life’s work as a missionary in India just may have been for naught. Barbie is full of good but misguided intentions. In my opinion, she is the most well developed character in the entire series thus far. A minor character in the previous book, Barbie is now the main player, and the others are drawn around her in stark comparison. These differences stand out as representing the attitudes of all British within India during this time of world war and the dying days of the empire. Paul Scott depicts these distinctions with great skill. It is truly riveting stuff reading about the various viewpoints as India undergoes her own transformation.

The manner in which these books have been written is quite interesting. I expected a somewhat linear story from one installment to the next. However, timelines overlap in these books as we are given perspectives from different characters in each. We see things from varying angles and that makes for a truly immersive and gratifying experience. What you thought you understood about one individual may be altered when seen from your new vantage point. I would go so far as to say that The Towers of Silence was even more emotive than its predecessors. I found all to be deeply stirring, but Barbie’s spiritual and moral crisis was brilliantly realized, as in this scene where even attempt at prayer seems to fail her:

"She cried out involuntarily, stood up, pushing back the chair. She went towards the mat and then began to tremble because she could not quite reach it and in any case her knees would not bend. She seemed fixed in this proud and arrogant position. Her jaws were locked too, her mouth still open as if to allow the cry to come back in. She could not remember what her principles were."

As in The Jewel in the Crown and The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence is rich in historical detail. I don’t think I could ever have learned so much from a school textbook, nor would I have attempted to do so without balking quite a lot! You simply cannot grasp the genuine significance of historical events without this sort of deeper and meaningful human element. It makes all the difference, and perhaps history would not repeat itself quite so often if we could incorporate this humanity into our scholarly learning. I highly recommend this series to anyone that appreciates well-researched historical fiction. These books are rather weighty, so do be sure to choose a period when you can devote the time they truly deserve. You won’t be disappointed. I’m anxious to pull out my copy of the final book in the series and become part of the last chapter of this compelling saga.

"All the central beds of rose trees had been dug up and turfed over… The roses in the beds that were left had been pruned down to bleak little skeletal bushes."

[Bionic Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The clouds of the southwest monsoon, thinned by the overland journey across the parched, open-mouthed, plain, appeared in the Pankot sky, and spilt what moisture they had left, establishing the wet-season pattern of sudden short showers, of morning mist which could be dispersed by the sunshine or give way to a light persistent drizzle. When the sun came out there was a strange mountain chill that did not make itself felt upon the flesh but in the nostrils, mingling there with the pervading scents of hot mud and aromatic gum. But this year these familiar manifestations of a Pankot summer contained an element, difficult to analyse, but unmistakably felt, of something that acted as an irritant.”

The old order of the British Raj, those towers of respectability, are crumbling. Slowly but surely, the events of the first two books in Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet” have shown each faltering step in the decline, and eventual demise as the grand edifice topples. Sometimes the events have been dramatic and profound; direct action by both Muslims and Hindus. At other times we focus on a detail: the tearing apart of an individual. The rape of an English woman, thus mirroring the rape of a country. The voluntary self-immolation of another white woman, one who had begun to identify herself more with the indigenous population. The hideous deliberate torture of a Hindu man.

All these and many more acts of violence and violation, have rocked the complacent world of the British in India. The first two novels are saturated with blood and fire, and the desperation of humans pushed to their limit. Paul Scott pounds his world into his readers’ consciousness, and also into their conscience. The Quartet has a powerful air of authentic fact, rather than fiction. It is really one behemoth of a novel, split into four parts; each part covering the same events, but seen from different perspectives. For its author The Raj Quartet had become his world, driving him over the almost decade it took him to write, to drink, depression and despair.

Different views, different people, each with their own history, and future—some already known to us. The result is a heady mix. We feel omnipotent, knowing the fate of some of those we read about, yet not the complete picture. In The Towers of Silence, the action has switched from the army encampment in Ranpur, to that in Pankot, where the military and civil functionaries in Pankot campaign to keep the status quo. Their position becomes increasingly precarious as the Raj collapses around their feet.

Each jostles for position, fighting their doubts and fears. Some attempt to remain superlatively British, keeping to their comforting rites and rituals, forgetting that “home” is now a very different country. Things have moved on. Some embrace India, becoming more Indian than British in their thinking. But there are casualties: broken souls.

This is the story of one broken soul, Barbie Batchelor. “Bachlev, Baba; the holy woman from the missions”, now retired. An ordinary woman, a drunkard’s daughter from Camberwell, she feels out of her place and class. She has always been a ludicrous figure of fun to most of those stationed in Pankot, though viewed with affection by Indians, as she speaks fluent Hindi. Barbie is troubled by many things: about where she should now live, and her success in converting the children in her school to Christianity. Most of all she feels that God has rejected her. Barbie tugs at your heartstrings. She is utterly devout, and most of all humble, yearns to be useful and have a clear function in society. A minor character in previous parts of the “The Raj Quartet”, we now find that the photographer has shifted his lens, to put her centre stage. She finds joy, and feels needed, endlessly chattering to the almost deaf Mabel, yet is lonely writing long letters which she may never send, to her erstwhile friends.

Mabel: “Aunty Mabel” to the Layton girls, fragile and unworldly, residing at the enormous “Rose Cottage” in Pankot. Mabel, whose grasp on the present is unknown, has chosen Barbie as her companion. Much respected memsahib, she is only now happy caring for the amassed roses in her garden. Mabel too has lost her faith: in this case her faith in the validity of the British Raj. Barbie desperately attempts to fulfil Mabel’s dearest wish, to be buried next to her late husband, James Layton. But as with all her plans, this one too is destined to flounder and crumble to nothing, swept aside by Mabel’s selfish sister Mildred. From their first meeting Mildred bitterly resents Barbie’s place in Mabel’s home; resenting too, Mabel herself, for secretly supporting the Indians who were killed during the Amritsar massacre.

Poignantly, Barbie is so naive, that when she hears the whispered words “Jallianwala Bagh” on the lips of her dozing friend, she worries about yet another important person in this British elite, Gillian Wallar, whom she does not know. She has no conception of the great load of guilt her friend feels, for the massacre perpetrated at Jallianwala Bagh, nor that the British Raj are all behind the General who oversaw the atrocity, thus excluding and isolating her friend in her inner agony.

Paul Scott’s focus shifts to Teddie Bingham. Another former minor character, this time a young officer in the Muzzy Guides, is placed centre stage. No longer is he merely a scatterbrained young man selected almost at random by Susan Layton to be her beau, but one destined for events of more import. Teddie epitomises honour and chivalry, and is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to prove his point. Would the villain of this quartet, Captain Ronald Merrick, do the same?

These characters are members of a dying race. Their nursery names, Teddie, Dicky, Tusker and Bunny, their rituals, their servants and their food, fitting them neither for life in a changing India, or life back in England. Some, with a clear vision, stand out. Sarah Layton, Paul Scott’s favourite character is one, although she is on the periphery of this novel. Another is Barbie, though beaten down by the constant insults, plus her own self-doubt, her grasp on reality begins to shake a little.

Yet in India, the truth is elusive. Is Barbie dreaming, or are these visions? She ponders if she is “due to become a visionary”. Whom does she see in the church? Or at the mortuary? Paul Scott likes his ghosts, whether seen by an individual character, or purely metaphorical. Metaphors abound. Events are seen as allegorical. Motifs recur: the birds, both vultures and song-birds, flocks and individuals. Analogies and symbols of the dying Raj pepper the text: “mummy-rag-thin flags”, or the regimental silver—highly prized by the Raj—locked away, or hidden: silver apostle spoons “Twelve witnesses to love of the sublimest kind”, rejected, then returned to the Pankot rifles, in a triumphal gesture of defiance. The metaphorical silver is repeatedly tarnished. The roses: fragile and beautiful, rare blooms in a country foreign to them. Heliotrope, a beautiful floral shade: a statement colour deliberately chosen by Barbie to wear to Susan’s wedding party, but actually worn for a funeral, aptly enough, since Victorians would wear this during the last stages of mourning. Ready perhaps, for the funeral of the Raj. “The Jewel in Her Crown”—the painting of Queen Victoria receiving homage from the world’s peoples is also here, yet as Barbie notes, it lacks an unknown Indian. These motifs and symbols are dotted about at odd intervals, and are finally, devastatingly, obliterated.

My favourite remains the butterfly shawl, an echo from before. A thing of beauty, crafted by a blind person who literally could not see the wonder she had created. Butterflies which danced and flew when the shawl was opened, but otherwise remained trapped in their delicate web of lace. How many in this story are trapped—their desires and aspirations hidden, just as the shawl remained hidden within the chest which contained all Barbie’s sentimentally precious possessions; her very life. And how long would India also remain caught in the web?

We worry about Aziz, longtime servant and friend of Mabel, who runs away when Mabel dies, presumably in his grief, unable to deal with the inevitable aftermath . What is the place for him in the new India? What will the place be for Hosain, another servant who accepts that his place is to wait hand and foot on Captain Ronald Merrick?

Rumours, lies and gossip abound. “Pandit Baba”, a devout Hindu, has connections with Indian nationalists. What of Mohammed Ali Kasim, an Indian politician? Now his son has changed sides, nailing his colours to the armed Indian nationalists. Captain Ronald Merrick, in his ruthless quest to climb the ladder of British society, gives a secret, confidential lecture on what he sees as the encroaching threat to the established order, with details about the leaders of the Indian Nationalists, to all ranks of army personnel. The regimental ladies are ignorant of these details, and impervious to change, and only vaguely sense the unrest as a slight annoyance.

The British women are mainly the wives of army personnel. The daughters are expected to marry within the army; that is their duty. Susan has done so, although the ensuing events have driven her out of her mind. Sarah refuses. She is her own woman, and has become Barbie’s only true friend.

We inwardly cheer Sarah on, seeing that she could herald a new age for India, but wonder how long this strength in her own beliefs, so opposed to the ruling regime, will last. She defiantly visits Lady Ethel Manners and Daphne’s daughter Parvati, of whom she is now in sole charge. Lady Manners is a key symbol: another character betwixt India and Britain, a mere phantom; an impression of a figure. Barbie and others catch glimpses of her, or see her signature in guest books after she has gone. Lady Manners seems to be everywhere and nowhere. Her very existence reminds the British in Pankot of the past, whether honourable or not, and leads us to think of an unknown future.

But the army wives are every bit as rigid in their roles as their husbands, from whom they derive their exact position in the hierarchy. At the bottom of the heap, worthy of little consideration are Mrs Smalley and Barbie Batchelor. Then come Nicky Paynton, destined to return to England, displaced and without function, once her husband had died, Clarissa Peplow, and Clara Fosdick, all subordinate to Isobel Rankin. The despicable Mildred Layton reigns supreme. No-one questions her authority. All manoeuvre for position, plotting and scheming, desperate to keep their rank and position, under the cover of gossip. Proud to view themselves as the British aristocracy in India, they keep their rituals, their tea parties, their committees, their good works; working hard to do what they see as their duty, as part of the British rule in India.

As the towers of the Raj begin to topple, we see their true personalities emerge. Their characters are revealed by what is said or unsaid, and what is implied. We see who is regarded as “untouchable”—a very Indian concept—“the Manners girl” for one; and increasingly Barbie Batchelor. When the vicar’s wife Clarissa, on sufferance allows Barbie to stay with them for a while, she begrudges Barbie any luggage, and also tells Barbie the vile rumours which are spreading about her, explaining that it is her “duty”, however much distress it causes Barbie. Theirs is a small world, and one where the most evil may rise to the top. We see Mildred Layton’s depths of deception and depravity, manipulating every situation for her own ends. In her own way, Mildred is every bit as villainous as Ronald Merrick, whose self-aggrandisement and vile deeds were spelt out so graphically.

Both characters have an unshakable belief in the superiority of the white British in India. For Ronald Merrick, it fuels his every move. Others may admire his intelligence, skill, dedication, and sheer hard work. He is a driven character, who submerges both his homosexual impulses, his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and more obviously his resentment at being a provincial middle class boy at heart, striving to be accepted by the British elite. He passes through, being viewed with a clear incisive eye by Sarah Layton. Paul Scott pointed out that not one word of all four parts of the Quartet was ever written from Merrick’s point of view. Nevertheless, we feel we have an objective view of the person, through his actions.

Mildred’s crimes may be smaller, but they are insidious, and endemic to her entire life. She positively revels in her cruel taunts of Barbie, deliberately hiding her hard-earned wedding gift of Apostle spoons to Susan, locking Mabel’s old room, and all the drawers and cupboards in Rose Cottage after Mabel’s death, and casually evicting Barbie and her trunk containing her “life”—her beloved mementos—from her home as soon as she gained possession. In a cruelly ironic final gesture, she destroys the rose garden, which Mabel loved, putting a barren, sterile tennis court in its place. Everything Mildred did was either for her own pleasure, or to increase her standing in the community. She mercilessly manipulated her daughters’ lives, exploited her sexual power over the weak Captain Kevin Coley, steadily drinking to excess, in order to ease her boredom. The delight with which she viewed the horrific death of Susan’s dog, whose only crime was loyalty and love, is truly sickening.

This may be the quietest novel of The Quartet, but it is deeply unsettling. Its masterstroke is to put Barbie Batchelor in the spotlight: epitomising both the logic of the West, and the mysterious, all-encompassing perceptions of the East. Her fate parallels that of her friend, Edwina Crane’s, and also parallels that of the Second World War itself. We see momentous world events mirrored in a microcosm.

Barbie’s existence in this world ends on August 1945, at the same split second as the atomic blast in Hiroshima. From a sanitarium in Ranpur, she can see the Parsi Towers of Silence, where the bodies of the dead are left to be picked clean by vultures. The title of this novel is a potent one:

“She remembered a great deal. But was unable to say what it was. The birds had picked the words clean.”

Barbie is now not only metaphorically without a voice, but literally too. The Raj is collapsing like a castle built on sand and the British with all their traditions, paternalistic beliefs and rigid sense of order, are going back to their small island. As Scott puts it they “came to the end of themselves as they were”.

Paul Scott’s depiction of this deeply troubled era is uncompromising, and disturbing.

Salut Barbie! Bravo Paul Scott!

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third of a quartet of books about the dying days of the British Raj in India. The affect is cumulative, with each successive novel building on the last, going back and forth in time, with important characters in one book becoming minor ones in another. This was the best one so far, not because of a perceptible difference in writing or plot, but because my understanding of this place and time is so much deeper. The arrogance of the British, the resentment of the Indians, both Hindu and Muslim, the interdependence of the two; it's all recreated in these books. With, of course, winners and losers on both sides, because that's the nature of humanity.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbie's Book

      In September 1939, when the war had just begun, Miss Batchelor retired from her post as superintendent of the Protestant mission schools in the city of Ranpur.
      Her elevation to superintendent had come towards the end of her career in the early part of 1938. At the time she knew it was a sop but tackled the job with her characteristic application to every trivial detail, which meant that her successor, a Miss Jolley, would have her work cut out untangling some of the confusion Miss Batchelor usually managed to leave behind, like clues to the direction taken by the cheery and indefatigable leader of a paper chase whose ultimate destination was not clear to anybody, including herself.

Paul Scott opens the third volume of his magisterial Raj Quartet, with a loquacious, well-meaning, but ineffective retired school teacher with nowhere to go. In reviewing the first volume of the Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown, I remarked on what I called Scott's liminal viewpoint, his tendency to tell the story of the last days of British rule in India through people who are relatively peripheral to it. This volume takes this almost to extremes, in focusing on a character with no power whatsoever. Barbie Batchelor is not a new arrival; we have met her already in the second volume, The Day of the Scorpion, and know that she takes a room in Rose Cottage, the house of the elderly Mabel Layton in the fictional hill town of Pankot. Indeed, with very few exceptions, all the action in The Towers of Silence has already been told in The Day of the Scorpion. It makes for a very peculiar book indeed, and not an entirely satisfying one.

Reading it was a strangely unsettling experience for me. A friend and I are spreading the four volumes over the course of a year, and it has actually been about four months since I read The Day of the Scorpion. Last year, however, I watched the brilliant Granada TV series again, so much of the story and many of the characters are burned into my mind. Reading the third volume now, I had a disturbing sense of déjà vu, not knowing whether something was familiar because I had read it before in a previous volume, or merely because I had seen the series. I now realize that almost all the familiarity came from having read it in previous volumes, and would apply to those who had not seen the television version at all.

Such action as there is centers around the Laytons, one of the most influential families in Pankot. Colonel Layton, Mabel's son, has been captured in battle and is in prison camp in Germany. His second wife, Mildred, now rules the roost in Pankot, and her daughters, the pretty Susan and the thoughtful Sarah, are the center of attention from the many young officers stationed in the town. Mildred feels she should be able to move her entire family into Rose Cottage, which her husband will inherit anyway, but Mabel dislikes her and offers the room to Miss Batchelor in part to keep her out. And indeed Mildred, a vindictive alcoholic snob, is surely one of the most unpleasant characters in literature, let alone in the Quartet. The volume will recap many of the events of its predecessor: Mabel Layton's death; Susan Layton's wedding and widowhood, and the birth of her baby; Sarah Layton's visit to Calcutta; and the complications of the Japanese tactic of recruiting captured Indian soldiers into the Indian National Army (INA) to fight against the British in the name of eventual independence. The only things that are really new in it are the events toward the end of the war, and the conclusion of Barbie's story. So two questions arise: what does Scott achieve in this volume if it mainly reexamines old events, and why does he choose to do it through Barbie?

Although Barbie is the main character, she remains essentially peripheral to Pankot society, and it is the structure of that society that is the main theme of this volume—a collective rather than individual focus. But this is more than a narrative device. The title of the first volume, The Jewel in the Crown, refers to a painting of Queen Victoria reviewing a march past of her Indian subjects. It epitomizes a Hindi term known as Man-Bap, or "mother-father." The Queen is both the mother and father of the Indian people, the parent to whom they owe obedience and will in turn feed and protect them. The man-bap principle then extends all the way down the hierarchical chain, and is the secret of the loyalty felt by Indian troops to their British officers. Hence the horror of Indians joining with the INA to fight against their military "parents." Hence, too, the hierarchical structure of the entire British colony, where wives take precedence over others by virtue of their husbands' rank, and even marriage is a matter of finding a girl whose father is of an appropriate seniority in a prestige regiment.

I have read many English novels dealing with class, but seldom anything so quietly vitriolic as the picture here. Mildred and most of the women around her despise Barbie because she is "not out of the top drawer." As soon as Mabel dies, Mildred does all she can to belittle her and oust her. Finding that Mabel has left her a small annuity, she is convinced that Barbie herself must have angled for it (not true), "because its a typically lower-middle-class idea of upper-class security and respectability." But this is not a surprise from the woman who constantly refers to Captain Samuels, the psychiatrist treating her own daughter, as "that trick-cyclist Jew boy." The more I learned about Mildred, the more I wanted to watch her come-uppance, but if Scott intends to give her one, he is saving it until the final volume.

I have been reading an interesting monograph by John Lennard called Reading Paul Scott. His section on Barbie Batchelor comes in a chapter titled "There's Nothing I Can Do," exploring what he calls "personal nullity" or the inability to influence events. This is obviously the case with Barbie. By showing her as increasingly visionary or delusional (one is never sure which), he also makes her an apt commentator on a political and moral crisis that she can intuit but not entirely understand. And by making her a devout Christian, he is also—shockingly—able to make her an ultimate commentator on the uselessness of Christian belief, at least as applied to the problems of India.

Lennard also makes the point that, as one of the only two lower-middle-class characters of significance, she stands as the female counterpoint to Ronald Merrick, the other. Lennard has two sections on Merrick: "Merrick as Antagonist" focuses on his role as the police officer who framed the suspects in the original rape case; "Merrick as Protagonist," however, looks at his more sympathetic side, and suggests that the character may have been the alter-ego of the author himself. Merrick makes only a few appearances in this volume (one as the almost unbelievably well-informed intelligence officer who delivers a necessary briefing on the INA), but the final one, with Barbie Batchelor in the uprooted garden at Rose Cottage, is extraordinarily touching. Barbie is almost the only one who sees this other side of Merrick, and her kindness to him is in many ways the culminating act of her life.

The only other person who sees something good in Merrick (and even that is shaded) is Sarah Layton. She is also the one woman in Pankot, after Mabel's death, to have any time for Barbie. With one significant exception, nothing new happens to Sarah in this volume, and her role is a small one. Nonetheless, she suffuses the volume with her thoughtfulness and kindness; if her mother is the book's least likeable character, she herself is the nicest. [And in this case, my memory of the extraordinary performance by Geraldine James on television does no harm whatsoever.] I see that Lennard lists Sarah as the fourth of the characters exemplifying personal nullity (the other two are Edwina Crane and Daphne Manners). I guess I shall have to wait until the final volume to see what he means by that. Meanwhile, I shall end with Barbie Batchelor's extraordinary insight into the younger woman's problem, which might also stand as the theme of the entire series. It is a beautiful testament to the friendship between a very young woman and a rather old one, the two loveliest characters in the book, and arguably the most perceptive:

Looking at Sarah, Barbie felt she understood a little of the sense the girl might have of having no clearly defined world to inhabit, but one poised between the old for which she had been prepared, but which seemed to be dying, and the new for which she had not been prepared at all. Young, fresh, and intelligent, all the patterns to which she had been trained to conform were fading, and she was already conscious just from chance or casual encounter of the gulf between herself and the person she would have been if she had never come back to India: the kind of person she 'really was.'

======

Here are links to my reviews of all the books in the Quartet, in order:

    1. The Jewel in the Crown
    2. The Day of the Scorpion
    3. The Towers of Silence
    4. A Division of the Spoils

And to Scott's semi-comic quasi-sequel: Staying On.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Parsis - members of the Zoroastrian faith, who have immigrated to India from Iran - do not bury or cremate their dead. The corpses are hung upon huge wooden structures to be picked clean by vultures. (I have seen this place in Mumbai from the outside. No outsiders can enter.)

An apt metaphor for a dead empire, being slowly devoured by the vultures of history - seen mostly through the eyes of Barbie Batchelor, a retired missionary schoolteacher: herself an anachronism.

Another winner from Paul Scott.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Installment number three in Paul Scott’s Indian quartet, The Towers of Silence is a heady and emotionally exacting read. Imagine my surprise when, instead of opening his next installment with the continuing story of Sarah Layton, Scott chooses to bring forward a rather minor character in the person of Barbara (Barbie) Bachelor. Of course, before we have reached the end of the novel, Bachelor is not a minor character at all, she is in fact a crux or hub around which what is happening in India can be observed with candor and some degree of understanding. She is, at the same moment, within the machine and outside it, and her presence represents more of the truth than many of her contemporaries can bear to acknowledge.

A retired missionary, Barbie has come to live as a paying guest with Mabel Layton, a recognized member of the military elite who has herself come to see India in a way that makes her question the life of the British raj and the disdain with which the Indian people have been and are treated. While Mabel can be accepted, because of her position, with whatever strange ideas she may entertain, the same cannot be said for Barbie, and it is the reactions of the other women as much as anything else that drives this story and tells us what ails the British in India.

As in the previous two novels of this series, Paul Scott has delved deeply and with precision into the wound that is festering in India. His ability to show all the ugliness, all the pomp and ostentation, alongside the uncomfortable realization that a way of life is ending and there is little that the participants can do but continue the play until the curtain falls, is masterful. With even the most reprehensible of his characters there is a touch of humanity that begs you to feel a twinge of pity for a life so misspent and deluded.

At the same time, there is nobility on display on both sides of the divide. Barbie Bachelor, I would say, represents a bit of that nobility and a great deal of courage. She faces some difficult truths, along with the slow erosion of her faith in God himself, and she perseveres nonetheless. Her good intentions and loyalty drive her sometime bizarre thoughts and actions. She is at everyone’s mercy and yet she is, without doubt, the most independent and genuine character in this group of lost souls.

Scott’s writing is rich in metaphor and symbolism, and I fear there is no way to catch every nuance or even grand design on a first reading. I found myself wishing to “go back” and read sections of the previous two novels, knowing that what seemed like a minor event in those books had taken on powerful and complicated meaning in this one. One example being the butterfly lace that Mabel owned--lace that was used to make a christening gown and becomes a death shroud for Barbie Bachelor. Thanks to Jean, I was paying special attention to this symbol as it unfolded. The lace was made by a blind woman, we are told, and its intricacies are a bit of wonder for each of those who encounter it; the butterflies unseen unless the lace is moving. It stands perfectly for India, moving forward and unfolding into a new and unique entity, different from what it was before the Raj and different from what it has been under the Raj, but it also stands as a perfect metaphor for the individual life, unfolding as well and sometimes standing so still that it takes on the pallor of death. So many of these people are not moving forward anymore, they are stifled, waiting and not living in any significant meaning of the word.

The language and construction Scott employs is a thing of beauty. This is a history lesson, but there are no long, boring lecture notes here. The story moves effortlessly and the history is so much a part of the action that it melds into the story, piercing the consciousness almost unnoticed. I marked dozens of passages, hoping to sere them into my mind. One which struck me particularly had to do with the picture...the original picture “The Jewel in the Crown” with which we began this adventure:

’One should always share one’s hopes,’ she said. ‘That represents one of the unfulfilled ones. Oh, not the gold and scarlet uniforms, not the pomp, not the obeisance. We’ve had all that and plenty. We’ve had everything in the picture except what got left out.’

‘What was that, Miss Bachelor?’

She said, not wishing to use that emotive word, ‘I call it the unknown Indian. He isn’t there. So the picture isn’t finished.’

The British have had India, they have ruled it, they have used it, but they have never understood it and their greatest failure can be seen in the omission of the main component that should have mattered, the Indian himself.

I mused throughout the book about the significance of its title. The silence? Barbara is a chatterbox, but in the end, even before her death, she is silenced. And she considers the loss of her voice as being as significant to her as the loss of sight to an artist or hearing to a musician. I could not help thinking of the silence before a storm. Everyone is in denial about the changes they see coming and the voices of reason are muffled and unheeded. The moment of silence we so often observe in reverence or remembrance of a loss. The very personal moment of silence at the end:

She raised a questioning or admonitory finger, commanding just a short moment of silence for the tiny anticipated sound: the echo of her own life.

But, on a larger scale, the Towers of Silence are real. They are daunting and large and they loom in the distance, and Barbie sees them surrounded by birds that circle and swoop. The birds are vultures, and the towers belong to the Parsees...the Muslim Indians...and Scott has just foreshadowed his final chapter--India’s final chapter--The Division of the Spoils.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The girl came the following morning. She said, 'The birds belong to the towers of silence. For the Ranpur Parsees.'

That 'towers of silence' is a neologism coined by the British colonial government in India in the nineteenth century, and that they're structures than enable the excarnation or picking apart of polluted dead bodies by vultures (according to Zoroastrian principle), and that these words are spoken to a woman who has chosen voluntary muteness (I think?) in the face of her inability to do anything constructive in India is a lovely example of how Paul Scott's writing works. The 'body' being picked clean by the vultures is both India being exploited by the British ('the Jewel in the Crown' of Queen Victoria - an emblem of wealth and beauty appropriated and owned, if only problematically), and the British Raj being eviscerated by the encroaching Japanese during WW2, and the rising and sometimes violent actions of the Indian nationalist/independence movement.

This complicated multiplicity of meanings that are layered on stark symbols makes this a narrative that depends on us reading the text in the way we read poetry - not a linear A-to-B storyline but by being sensitive to images (the butterfly lace, the portrait of Victoria), to verbal echoes and to the way events play out both as literal happenings and as something more subterranean and symbolic (the rape, Miss Crane kneeling in the rain holding the hand of a dead Indian, circles of fire).

At the story level, little new is revealed to us here from the previous two books, though some of the perspectives are changed and we learn more about the early relationship between Teddie and Ronald Merrick, as well as having a deeper view of the Laytons. Time circles as we wind back to events whose outcomes we already know, as well as flashing forward to the end of the war ('It was August 6th, 1945 [...] her shadow burnt into the wall behind her as if by some distant but terrible fire').

At the heart of the book is Barbie Batchelor, the old, rather hapless and somewhat irritating ex-Mission teacher. Yet somewhere amidst her rambling Barbie has both a kind of uncanny spiritual insight even as she loses her faith in her god, and allows Scott's vicious exposure of the social hierarchies and petty powers upon which empire is necessarily built. As Barbie faces up to the fact that her evangelical mission to convert Indian children to Christianity has failed, she also questions the very basis of the colonial project.

While this is an important volume in the Quartet, I found it a slightly less compelling read than the previous two books which were both 5-stars for me. Still, I'm eager to move on to the final volume of this immensely rich, dense and complex analysis of the dying days of the British Raj.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part three of this saga continued the story of the Layton family. This part of the story also shed more light on Barbie the retired missionary.

Other reoccurring characters such as Ronald Merrick and Lady Manners made appearances as well.

I am looking forward to reading about what happens in parts four and five of this saga.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the third one of the series The Raj Quartet.

Some historical background which is important in order to follow the plot:

Pankot, Barbie Batchlor's new home:



Page 50:
Gandhi's quit India resolution (Quit India Movement), August 14th, 1942.



Page 100:
Subhas Chandra Bose takes the leadership of the Indian National Army.



Page 284:
...the defeat of the Japanese attempt to invade India at Imphal...




The plot is set in Pankot which is a "second class" hill station in the province which serves as a headquarters for the 1st Pankot Rifles, an important regiment of the Indian Army, who fought the Axis (the alignment of nations that fought in the Second World War against the Allied forces) in North Africa.

This is the story of Barbie Batchelor, an old missionary schoolteacher, who, after years of service to the church, decides to take her pension and retire. She finds a place as a paying guest with Mabel Layton, a member of the aristocracy of the English in India, at Rose Cottage in Pankot. Barbie and Mabel become close. Late one night, Mabel tells Barbie that she will only go to Ranpur when she's buried, which Barbie interprets to mean that she wants to be buried in Ranpur, next to the grave of her late husband, James Layton.

Barbie is proud of her working class background and her simple Christianity, but she does her best to behave in a manner that makes upper-class Pankot comfortable. Unfortunately, they will never accept her as one of their own, treating her as a peculiar and unwanted intruder.

This book's title is related to the Parsee's Tower of Silence which is a circular, raised structure used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead, particularly to scavenging birds.



The sequel of this book is The Division of Spoils and is the final part of the Raj Quartet.

From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
After the death of Mabel Layton, her companion Barbie Batchelor has to leave Rose Cottage.

It's summer 1945, and as the war comes to a close, the days of the British Raj are numbered...

Paul Scott's classic series of novels dramatised by John Harvey.
Sarah Layton - Lia Williams
Mildred Layton - Geraldine James
Susan Layton - Alex Tregear
Ronald Merrick - Mark Bazeley
Fenny Grace - Selina Griffiths
Barbie Batchelor - Marcia Warren
Reverend Peplow - Ian Masters
Clarissa Peplow - Susan Jameson
Kenneth Coley - Stephen Hogan

With Jason Chan, Robert Hastie, Rez Kempton, Stuart McLoughlin and Ndidi Del Fatti.

Music by Raiomond Mirza.

Director: Jeremy Mortimer

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2005.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09w...

[Kressel Housman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third book in The Raj Quartet, and I found it the most complex so far. It does not pick up where the last one left off, but begins at a point in time even before the first book. More importantly, there’s a shift in perspective: we’re now in the life of Barbie Batchelor, a peripheral character in The Day of the Scorpion. The Quartet has been told from multiple perspectives from the very beginning, but Paul Scott’s mastery particularly shines through with Barbie. Usually when books have an ensemble cast, they’re all living through one central event. We saw that with The Jewel in the Crown; it was everyone’s reactions to Daphne’s rape, and it ended with the real story from Daphne herself. But Barbie, who lives with the Laytons, experiences the major events of The Day of the Scorpion right along with them, but like any independent human being, has a whole life full of other concerns that sometimes have nothing to do with them. I suppose what I’m saying is that when other books switch into another character’s perspective, the central plot of the story doesn’t shift. Here, when we switch from Barbie to Teddie, for example, the whole story seems to shift, too. It’s much more like real life. We’re all the center of our own lives, and only sometimes do our lives intersect with others'.

Because of the shifting perspectives and overlapping timelines, the book can be hard to follow. I found myself going back several times, and I’m not finished doing it yet. The more I re-read, the more awed I am by the book. The foreshadowing is rich yet subtle. There are so many things hinted at that I didn’t pick up on the first time. It truly is a masterpiece. Everyone on the planet should read it.

[booklady · Rating 5 out of 5]

As soon as I finished, The Day of the Scorpion, I went in search of my old copy of The Towers of Silence, the third novel in the Raj Quarte. If you are looking for an excellent expository review of this book, there is none better here on Goodreads, than that of Bionic Jean, so I won’t even try to compete with or imitate her effort, but strongly encourage you to read hers.

Towers is a poignant and haunting saga. The characters are drawn so realistically by the author you will know and remember them forever.

Most highly recommended.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott writes old white women brilliantly. There actually isn't too much new plot in this third installment of the Raj Quartet, set in the hill station of Pankot; we mostly go over ground covered in the first two novels, sometimes from an omniscient perspective, sometimes from that of a different character. The spinster educator and missionary Barbie Batchelor is the protagonist. Her relationships with the dowager Mabel Layton, and Mabel's stepson's chilly wife Mildred Layton, are wonderfully limned here. Indians recede to the background.

I wonder now if Scott modeled his storytelling on the Alexandria Quartet.

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2013, on the recommendation of Eva Brann, I read the first book in the Raj Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown. In 2016, I finally finished the second in the series The Day of the Scorpion and today I completed book 3, The Towers of Silence, which took me about a year to read. I can hardly wait to start the final installment A Division of the Spoils.

There are novels you read because they are thumping good reads and there are novels you read because they give you a sense of time and place. The Raj novels are important historical novels which capture great truths in ways that pure history never could. This third installment is my favorite so far. Paul Scott tells the same story he told in books 1 and 2 from a different perspective in this book. Someone has said the author really 'gets' older white women and I have to say I agree. He takes the somewhat ridiculous spinster Barbara Batchelor and makes her a human being with hidden insight and perspective. It is beautifully done.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent novel. Told mostly via Barbie a companion living in Rose Cottage in Pankot with elderly Mabel Layton. Mildred Layton is not happy about this development which forces her to look very in the military camp. Sarah is the heroine in this with Susan recovering from her breakdown.

Merrick is visited in hospital recovering from his wounds while trying to save Teddie. He tells the story about how it happened. Later Sarah goes out with an officer where she makes a big decision.

The story shows Mildred’s true colors and her pettiness and snobbery. The descent into madness by Barbie is brilliantly written. Poor Panther is used as a analogy of the English and India as well as the cruelty and small mindedness of Mildred.

Look forward to reading the fourth one.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Towers Of Silence, the third of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, is very much a novel about women. Set in India in the 1940s, the war impinges on almost every aspect of their lives, but they experience conflict largely second hand via the consequences for their male associates. Their lives are changed because those of their men folk have been affected. But it is the internal conflicts, as these women strive to maintain normality within the abnormal, that provide the book with its real substance, its real battleground. And these are no mere domestic fronts. There are conflicts of interest, prejudices, especially in the realm of social class and ascribed worth, that shed real blood.

Here are just a few of the women involved. Mildred Layton and her two daughters, the long-suffering Sarah and simpler Susan, have John, husband and father, detained as a prisoner of war in Europe. Susan’s new husband, the rather dull and inexperienced Teddy, has been killed in action on the Burma front. She bears his child, tentatively and premature. There’s Mabel, Mildred’s rather off-beat step-mother-in-law who occupies Rose Cottage, the well appointed residence that really would be put to better use if it housed the rest of the family, allowing them to vacate the less-than-adequate, if not actually demeaning government issue where they currently reside. And then there’s Barbie Batchelor, Mabel’s housemate of some years. She’s an ex-missionary, a teacher of young children, parlour maid class, of course, now put out to the pasture of retirement, pasture that just happens to be the laws of the favoured and evied Rose Cottage.

From the previous two books in the quartet, the two Manners characters, Daphne, who was abused in the 1942 Mayapore civil unrest, and her aunt, Lady Manners, still figure large in events. The fall-out for the now ex-policeman, Ronald Merrick, still troubles, pursues him, in fact. Daphne died in childbirth, so he believes the case died with her. No-one else seems to think so. Intriguingly the surviving child is also a girl.

But it is Barbie who emerges a the book’s focus. Her friend and colleague, Edwina Crane, opened the sequence of novels. She was also attached in the 1942 riots, and then later she committed suttee, her mind allegedly disturbed by what had happened. It was an act that Barbie could not and still can not understand, provoking her to question whether her life devoted to bringing Indian children to God might just have been mis-spent. Sarah Layton will still talk to her, but Mildred hates her. And so when…

But then this is all plot, and the reader wants this to unfold anew from the book, itself. Let it be said that the characters of The Towers Of Silence interact in remarkably complex ways. But what is actually said is only ever a small part of a much bigger story. It was Lawrence Durrell who described the English having a hard and horny outer shell, but soft at centre, exploring the world via sensitive antennae called humour and prejudice. And this description fits the way in which the colonial British in India have become a caricature of a society that no longer exists in the home country. Change is inevitable, and when it comes it is likely that those left rootless by it will be laid out on a tower of silence, the place where Parsees leave their dead to be picked to bones by raptors, where all the fleshed-out airs and graces of class will fall away.

Paul Scott’s novel is sensitive, but analytical enough to have a vicious streak. It is full of rumours and, of course, prejudice, especially in the way that its characters deal with anyone suspected of having lower social status than themselves. And if you are a colonial British in India, that’s just about everyone, despite the lack of obvious future that the way of life might claim.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't wait to hear the rest of the Kumar/Merrick story (from #1 and #2), so I powered through "Towers of Silence." But alas, the focus here is on Miss Barbie Batchelor and Edwina Crane, gardens, the Rose Cottage, a trunk, a set of spoons, and finally the birds of the towers. And it's all often breathtaking. The prose beautiful with this final line: "They found her thus, eternally alert, in sudden sunshine, her shadow burnt into the wall behind her [Barbie ] as if by some distant but terrible fire." Then there is a quote by Gandhi serving as a short 'Appendix' that mentions the destruction of Hiroshima. Does this magnify Barbie's personal fire, diminish it, or neither? Thus I closed the pages a bit mystified. Jus short of 5 stars. On to #4!

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this one best, so far. The focusing on Barbara allows for more a look at not just the Raj but also the class issues. There is some beautiful writing here as well.

[LauraT · Rating 4 out of 5]

And now let's go on with the fourth!

[Sookie]

Merrick is one of the best antagonists I have read. He is deeply flawed, incredibly human and the depravity of his thoughts spark the saga of this quartet. The morality that he portrays comes from his prejudice, disproportional distribution of wealth, the jealousy complex that he has nurtured all through his life that in the end becomes triggering factors in many a lives and irrevocably changing destinies of many people around him.

Scott's characters are incredibly grounded - one of them who is sympathetic towards Indian freedom movement, critical towards British behavior but exhibits elitism and classicism when propositioned for company. There is a layer to every character, nuance in their actions and these characters transform as time moves ahead.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."

This is the third instalment of the "Raj Quartet," and again the ripples from the incidents at the core of "The Jewel in the Crown." are still being felt.

We were introduced to Barbie Batchelor in the previous book but there she was but a small bit part player, here she takes centre stage. Barbie is a former missionary teacher who on retirement moves into Rose Cottage in Pankot with the Layton's step-grandmother-in-law Mabel. Many in Pankot were shocked that Barbie should have moved in with Mabel rather than the latter's daughter-in-law,Mildred, and her two daughters but despite some dark mutterings nothing was said. Mabel and Barbie live a quiet rather insular life away from the hustle and bustle of the encampment but Barbie is still generally disliked in particular by Mildred and her daughter Susan, whilst the other daughter Sarah is friendly towards her.

Pankot was largely untouched by the trouble that broke out in Mayapore after the incidents concerning Daphne Manners and Edwina Crane, its residents instead having to rely on rumour and second hand news for its information but Barbie comes to some prominence when she reveals that she knew her fellow missionary, Edwina Crane.

In this novel the reader learns about the courtship of Susan and Teddie and the events that led up to Ronald Merrick, the police inspector at the centre of the Mayapore incident, becoming Teddie's best man. However, central to this book are the parallels between the two ex-missionaries Barbie and Edwina, their gradual decline of confidence in the evangelical rationale of their calling and the loneliness of the British once their work in India comes to an end, in particular as the Second World War also heads towards its conclusion.

Teddie's reaction to Merrick's talk about the Indian National Army which allies against the British with the Japanese makes for interesting reading and rather oddly the meaning behind the previous novel's title is revealed but as with the previous books in this series there is little action here. Instead its strength lies in conversational shifts and character revelations, many of them taking place in Rose Cottage.

This book does its job in advancing the timeline towards the end the war, even if these events remain distant. However, this was also my least favourite so far. In many its disturbing depiction of the breakdown of belief and of order, as a Britain, makes this an unsettling read but I believe that the author attempts to link Barbie's decline with that of the empire and its crown jewel felt, especially considering what had gone before, a bit simplistic and strangely heavy handed. I must admit that the lack of new action was also beginning to frustrate me. On with the final book in the series, here's hoping it goes out with a bang.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main focus of the "The Towers of Silence" which is the third volume of the Raj Quartet is the pecking order among the women of the Anglo-Indian community at the end of the Raj (a.k.a. the British Colonial regime in India.) The protagonist Barbie Batchelor is a virgin, spinster and retired missionary school teacher. As such she is at the very button rung of the Anglo-Indian social hierarchy and therefore mercilessly pecked on. The novel presents a very sour view of the English who lived in India and of humanity in general.
Barbie Batchelor is the doppelganger of Edwina Crane, the director of the missionary schools, who in Volume I ("The Jewel in the Crown") commits suicide after anti-English rioters kill a native missionary school teacher who was riding with her in an automobile. Miss Batchelor sees all the same evils and comes understand that her dreams for a peaceful Christian India will never be realized. Miss Batchelor, however, does not lose hope. She concludes like St. Paul that she has fought the good fight and serenely departs to the next world.
Another narrative stream follows of two young English girls (Susan and Sarah) who are daughters of a senior British military officer and thus very close to the summit of Anglo-Indian society. Both have the misfortune to become pregnant at the wrong time. Susan conceives weeks before her husband a young military officer will die fighting to repel Japanese invaders from India. She has a breakdown and attempts to kill her baby. Sarah who becomes pregnant after a one-night stand prudently chooses to have an abortion.
The novel also deals with the issue of the desertion of native troops from the Indian army and their enrolment in the Indian National Army a unit of the invading Japanese military. Scott examines the phenomenon from multiple perspectives allowing the reader to choose his own point of view.
"The Towers of Silence" is an excellent component of the overall "Ray Quartet". It is tightly coupled to the overall series and can only be read in its proper place in the sequence.

[Nisha Sadasivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is no God, not even on the road from Dibrapur"

"The calendar was a mathematical progression with arbitrary surprises"

Time and again Paul Scott impresses me with not just his story-telling and character development skills, but also with his deep knowledge of Indian history - the INA and Bose's mastermind plans among others. Did anyone even know of Mohan Singh and Rash Bihari Bose? Not me. Not until I read this book.

As always, I also admired Scott's ability to look at things from each character's perspective - from that of a revolutionary Indian, a hot-headed Britisher or a sympathetic white lady in the form of Mabel Layton, her spiteful daughter-in-law, or her ever-smart and responsible granddaughter Sarah Layton

That apart - the central character of this book - Barbie Batchelor was absolutely lovable. I missed her all through the second book - The Day of the Scorpion. However I wouldn't shy to say I absolutely loved Hari Kumar in the previous volume.

One does not expect an entire volume dedicated to this meek, yet lovable lady with her little dreams, and mighty insecurities.

The Towers of Silence - the burial ground of the Parsis.

I can't wait to lay hands on the next book - The Division of Spoils, can't wait to fall in love with Ahmed Ali Kasim.

[Martin Zook · Rating 5 out of 5]

A key to unlocking The Towers of Silence, Paul Scott's third installment of the Raj Quartet, is none other than the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who opined that the individual is the portal to history.

That is unless the reader would rather choose entry through the towers of silence used by the Parsees (a Zoroastrian community that fled Muslim conquering of Persia) during their funeral rights to lay their deceased out for the vultures to feast on.

Either way, the infinite land of Scott's work serves as the silent backdrop from which violent events arise.

So, for the sake of our sanity, let's not enter through the towers of silence. Gruesomeness aside, the individual offers a more accessible portal. But all ends up receding into the same silence from whence it came anyway in the world Scott paints.

As was the case in the second volume Day of the Scorpion, the women continue to dominate center stage, especially the visionary Barbara Batchelor, Barbie to her friends, and to Scott. Barbie is a missionary on the periphery of Raj society. She is taken in by Mabel Muir, herself an outsider who senses well ahead of her fellow Brits the ebb of the Raj's tide.

And, Mabel runs counter to the herd. When unarmed civilians are slaughtered at Amristar by troops led by Brigadier Reginald Dyer, the Raj community rallies around their general and sets up a defense fund. But Mabel makes a sizable contribution to the fund the Indians set up for families of the victims.

It is largely through the individual characters of Barbie and Mabel - both alluded to as towers of silence, by the bye - that Scott examines the Raj during the end of World War II as fundamental shifts shake things up in the emerging Indian nation.

Barbie and her visions are shaped by Emerson's essays, including: "'There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time.'" Her dreams - some of which accurately anticipate events and understand unexplained occurrences - conjure "the figure of an unknown Indian: dead in one aspect, alive in another. And after a while it occurred to her that the unknown Indian was what her life in India had been about."

The fact is that much of her life has been frittered away on failed attempts to teach children in a missionary school that is adrift in India, neither sanctioned by the Raj, nor embraced by Indians. And this failure runs parallel to much of the Raj's tenure in the subcontinent.

The difference is that Barbie has the courage to explore the failings of the Raj, something that never occurs to mainstream Raj society whose energies are devoted to maintaining the myth of the Raj. In the words of one of the military matrons, "There would be no chain of trust if there were no chain of command." Mabel, on the other hand, already knows.

This review, as any review of the Raj quartet is bound to be, is just a sliver of the pie. The characters are the action as they evolve and mutate, pinging off one another and reacting.

Mildred, Mabel's step-daughter in law, deserves a brief mention. She is the third of the many triangles signaling a "danger zone" among shifting characters. She herself, like all the characters, has a quality that alienates her from others, yet she is very much a player in the Raj's Pankot society.

The characters also are bestowed a mix of qualities that not only make them difficult to pin down for those who inclined to pass judgment, but also make for interesting exchanges with others. This is especially true for the villain/hero Reginald Merrick, a police official whose qualities simultaneously border on the psychopathic and all that is virtuous about the Raj.

On the one hand, he is accused of torturing Indian suspects brought in for questioning, or suspected of wrongdoing, in his eyes. At the same time, he is lauded for keeping a lid on things in a way that is judged fair, even by those who are in a position to criticize him.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossibly beautiful, tragic, urgent, moving, ecstatic, its frustrating bits of war reportage and historical minutiae included. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING on the British in India comes even close - hell, who cares about the British in India, this is about the human condition as a whole, and very little comes close there too. I could not read the closing pages, I could not bear to let this work end.

[William Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Raj Quartet" is basically an updating of the kind of sprawling, society-describing epic 19th century writers were so fond of: the Palliser novels, say. The difference is that Scott, influenced by the modernist trends of the 20th century, is far less concerned about plot than the Thackerays and Trollopes were. When Trollope describes the state of English politics, he does it through the plot arcs of his characters, MPs, ministers, and PMs who rise on Reform and fall on the Irish question. By contrast, very little happens to Scott's characters. The great plot arcs of a "Vanity Fair" are almost entirely absent, and the plots that do make an appearance are mostly domestic ones, with only a minor or tangential connection to the great events of the day. There are no Governor-Generals here, and only one major (fictional) Congress Party figure. Even "The Jewel in the Crown", which nominally focuses on the riots that followed the arrest of leading Congress Party members in 1942, mostly takes place either before or long after those riots. Though "The Jewel in the Crown" could be considered a whodunit, centering as it does on the resolution of an unsolved crime, what it really cares about are the people involved, however peripherally, and what they say about India under English rule. By the time the crime is resolved, its resolution really doesn't matter all that much any more. The second book, "The Day of the Scorpion", moves even further away from the action, both by shifting the setting to (mostly) a hill town that is fairly distant from all the excitement and by having most of its characters be women, whose role in the big doings of the time is of necessity minimal. Scott's focus on the Layton family is intended to reveal how British India destroys even the most ordinary and unimportant of its members.

In "The Towers of Silence", he takes that to the next level, focusing on one of the less interesting minor characters from "The Day of the Scorpion": Barbie Batchelor, the garrulous and slightly dotty retired missionary who is Mabel Layton's companion (and also her protection against her step-daughter-in-law). In a Trollope or Dickens novel, Barbie would have been largely two-dimensional, there to provide some comic relief, but for Scott there's no such thing as a minor character: Barbie's inner life is as rich and varied, and as affected by the Raj, as anybody else's, and she is perfectly capable of carrying a book in her own right. (To drive the point about the importance of all his characters home, Scott also gives us 50 pages devoted to Teddy Bingham, Susan's husband, to show that he is not simply a caricature of an empty-headed upper-class army officer.) Thus we get many of the incidents of the previous book reprised from Barbie's viewpoint, which gives an interesting new view on some of the previous book's characters (in particular, a realization of just how poisonous Mildred actually is), as well as, of course, Barbie's slow disillusionment with British India.

Much of this disillusionment can be traced back to the events of the first book, in particular the suicide of Edwina Crane. Not only were Barbie and Edwina in the same missionary organization, Barbie replaced Edwina after Edwina's first brush with heroism, when she single-handedly turned a gang of marauders away from the schoolhouse where she was teaching with only the force of her personality. Under the circumstances it's not particularly surprising that Barbie looked up to Edwina, and so naturally Edwina's suicide came as a great shock to her. As she attempts to make sense of Edwina's actions, she is lead to the same realization that Edwina had: that the civilizing mission they both represented in India was never more than a thin veneer on a system of often-brutal exploitation. Edwina and Barbie had not just simply failed to help the Indians they had essentially given their entire adult lives to help, but simply by being in India, and helping in a way to justify the British presence, they had actually made their lives worse. It's not just that their time in India was wasted, it's that it could never have not been wasted. Despair -- Edwina's first, and then Barbie's as she understands Edwina's motivations -- is thus invoked early in the book, and never really goes away.

Even the rest of the women -- the wives of the mid-to-high-ranking army and civil officers who make up most of the little community we focus on -- are not immune to it. The effects on the Layton's -- Sarah's anomie, Susan's breakdown, Mildred's ever-increasing drinking and bitterness -- are the most dramatic, but Scott, ever alert to maintain the importance of all of his characters, also sketches out the impact on Mildred's considerably less neurotic friends. By 1943 or 44 it's increasingly obvious that British India is coming to an end, and these women must face the dissolution of their society and their forced relocation to England, a country they don't know and that is not particularly anxious to welcome them home. If one's sympathy for their plight is somewhat limited, it's nonetheless a real plight: most of them are far from wealthy, and they are, after all, being forced to leave their homes, victims of the Raj in their own way.

Unlike the previous two volumes, "The Towers of Silence" has a total lack of any sort of Indian perspective: it buries itself almost completely in the insular Anglo-Indian society. Some balance is provided by Mabel Layton's quiet revolt against the Raj, a revolt that is all the more powerful as she, as the widow of a Major General, is universally expected to be a pillar of it. Instead, she declines the homage her husband's former regiment wishes to offer her, and sends money to a fund that provides for the wives and orphans of those killed in the Amritsar massacre. She, together with the hovering figure of Lady Manners, who is never actually seen but whose presence, presumably with baby Parvati, is widely felt, provide a moral center for the novel. However, it doesn't last: Mabel dies of old age, Lady Manners leaves, and all that remains is the deepening despair of a community that can feel that it's being left behind. Susan snaps, Mildred turns increasingly vicious, and Barbie becomes steadily more unhinged, ending in a mental asylum. The title of the book is also its last image: Barbie sees the towers from her hospital room, and is absorbed by the birds she can see around them. As it happens, the Towers of Silence are the locations where Parsis (some of the last Zoroastrians on Earth) practice "sky burial", the custom of leaving the bodies of the dead out to be eaten by scavengers: the birds are vultures, waiting for the next corpse. And on that cheerful note, "The Towers of Silence" comes to an end.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There is no God, not even on the road from Dibrapur."

Reading the Raj Quartet, Paul Scott's sprawling portrait of the British in India at the end of the Raj, is like watching a pack (flock?) of penguins on a melting iceberg. The penguins know the iceberg is melting, but instead of doing anything about it, they just sit around, drink a lot of gin and play bridge.

Just as with the first two books, Scott strikes a precarious balance between the intimate personal and epic societal struggles at play.

[Lupo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terzo libro del Quartetto del Raj e, per il momento, l'ultimo tradotto (non bene) in italiano. Questo terzo libro non riporta fatti nuovi, se non marginali, ma narra, in tempi contemporanei ai due precedenti libri, le vicende di alcuni personaggi secondari dei libri precedenti e racconta i dettagli di alcune vicende anch'esse narrate brevemente nei precedenti volumi. In questo libro è protagonista principale Barbie Batchelor, inquietante, molto inquietante, figura di missionaria che va a vivere la sua pensione a casa della vecchia Mrs. Mabel Layton. La guerra, nel frattempo, porta sconvolgimenti a Pankot, sede del comando inglese.
Anche se appena meno bello dei due libri precedenti, forse perché qui si gioca molto con le abitudini e la morale del mondo militare e civile dei colonialisti britannici, il libro è in ogni caso appassionante (e inquietante).

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not far from the truth to say that I am entirely surrounded by water books. But over the last couple days, I've been feeling restless and enervated, reading-wise. I feel like I already knew all the books that I have, even the ones that I haven't read.

I started reading this one because I felt like since I knew nothing about the author, the genre, or the time period (the last days of English rule of India), I had no idea what to expect and could be surprised, or at least not-bored.

Was I not-bored? Well, sometimes. While I don't think this was an autobiographical novel, it was clearly informed by the author's experiences as an army officer in the last days of the Raj. The other day, I was saying to a buddy (in regards to Life) that sometimes you read a book and it makes really brings home that the world has changed since the book was written or since the events being written about.

This is kind of one of those. The subject of sex is completely taboo, but bizarrely, abortion is more okay to talk about than sex. It kind of reminded me of Barrayar — both that specific book and the setting generally. (For those of you who are not familiar, sex is not a subject for polite company, especially mixed company. Young women especially are not expected to know about it. And it's a major them of that series that this ignorance is, if not necessarily lethal, then definitely bad for you.) Here even men are ignorant about sex, to some extent.

The sexual goings-on in this book were kind of messed up. Sometimes enough to make me feel raaaaaaage and be glad to be alive now and not then. Not that things are perfect now but ... there's a lot of Death by Sex and related tropes going around here.

Another thing that's big in this story: class differences, and awareness of them. I won't claim that that's a thing that doesn't matter in the U.S., but I will say that it's less rigid than it used to be in the U.K. than I am led to believe.

Edit: Something I forgot when originally writing this review: in a way this novel is like someone put The Towers of Trebizond and David Weber's Honor Harrington series together. Especially at first it kind of has the emotional atmosphere of the former. But in the middle there's a large-ish military life section, including briefings and such, mostly concerning the Indian National Army, a group that was formed and supplied by the Japanese to try to undermine British colonial rule in India. (And the Brits all knew that they were close to done there anyway.) But that was a surprise to me — everyone has heard about Gandhi and non-violent resistance in India but armed resistance from around the same time was a surprise. The link is the best I was able to find after a quick search — I'm going to try some dead tree sources at some point.

This is the third book in a series, so there is a sense of some missing elements ... but you could read it first without being hopelessly confused.

[Penner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The four volumes of the Raj Quartet overlap and complement one another, while at the same time forwarding the main storyline of the slow twilight of the British ascendancy in India, always with the rape of a white girl by Indian men as the central lodestone everpresent in the background, the nightmare which is seldom mentioned but which none can drive from their minds. Events occur, are discussed, witnessed as newspaper reports, court documents, interviews, vague recollections from years later, or perceived directly by the main characters. Then the next volume will take two or three steps back into previous events, and these same events will be perceived from another angle, perhaps only as a vague report heard far away across the Indian plain, or witnessed directly by another character, or discussed in detail long after their occurrence over drinks on a verandah. This may at times seem like rehashing, indeed as one reads the four volumes one will be subjected to the account of the rape in the Bibighar Gardens many times over; but what will also become apparent is that additional details, sometimes minor variations in interpretation and sometimes crucial facts, are being added slowly to the events discussed, as though the window to the past were being progressively wiped cleaner and cleaner with successive strokes of Scott's pen. In this way he draws the picture of the last days of the Raj not in a conventional linear fashion, but recursively, and from multiple angles. One gets the clear impression of life in India during the first half of the 20th century as similar in nature: Fragmented, multifaceted, largely dependent upon perspective and experience and never perceived whole or all at once.

Book 3 is the shortest of the four volumes, and may almost be termed a "chamber novel," focusing as it does on the peripheral character of Barbie Batchelor, a retired missionary and lodger at the Laytons' ancestral home. Barbie is an instantly recognizable character: The kind of person who always lurks about the edges of society, awkward, embarrassing, barely tolerated by her peers. Book 3 covers much of the same time period as Book 2, this time from Barbie's point of view and also from that of Teddie Bingham, Susan Layton's husband. Teddie meets Ronald Merrick while on duty and more of Merrick's character and history is filled in. Book 3 then moves beyond the point at which Book 2 ended and continues Barbie's story, her eventual ouster from the Layton's home and slow descent into illness and madness.

[Vel Veeter]

This is the third and shortest of the four main volumes of the Raj Quartet. I plan on reading and reviewing the final work, which is a connected, but not direct volume, which is also short.

This novels spends the bulk of its time focusing on the Laytons and their various connections. The Laytons are a blend of educators and military officials and the plot of the novel centers around the love affair of Teddy Bingham ( a military officer) and Susan Layton, one of the daughters.

The novel opens up a lot of questions related to the idea of one’s purpose and place in a colonial space as the situation is quickly changing. It is clear to many of the people involved that the British India is limited in years. And so the question is quickly becoming what will happen to those there once the stakes are finally pulled up. This is idea is especially explored with the death of military figures and the question of their widows and family. The Layton mother has lost two husbands to fighting and disease respectively and she still finds a place in the world of the Raj, but it’s clear that her daughters are in a caught-between place and their place in the world is less secure.

The novel, like the others, spiral around a variety of topics and small stories and still focuses centrally on the rape and eventual death of Daphne Manners in the opening of the first novel. But the narrative has moved beyond a little. This is the first of them feels like a bridge between narratives, but it’s still very good.