I've just finished Kim -- Rudyard Kipling's celebrated novel of British India -- and I must admit, I'm of two minds.
On one hand, this is a book guided by tremendous erudition. Kipling seems to have mastered it all: local dialects, fashion, geography; the list goes on. There were moments when reading Kim that I felt I'd entered something approaching a 'total novel.' It was as if I'd been immersed -- without warning, without welcome -- in the Raj. Put differently: this is a book made of four sturdy walls. There's one way in and one way out. In the middle, there's only character and description, society and culture.
Having said all this, I found myself surprisingly unmoved by the whole thing. And more: I found the novel a chore to read. Kim's journey -- his awakening and maturation -- are often obscured by the intensity of Kipling's prose, by the density and claustrophobia of his writing. I concede that I struggled at times to follow the story, and to understand how the European characters, especially, fit into Kim's evolution.
No doubt, there's an authenticity to Kim which would be -- and which has been -- difficult to match. Conversely, there's an opacity which I found difficult to surmount. Kim's adventures are one thing: how they fit into the 'total' vision of British India presented by Kipling is another. For my part, I suppose I'd still take Orwell's Burmese Days.
