Hills are Alive

Apart from capturing the sights,sounds and character of a hill station — Ranikhet in this case — she also uses the eccentricities of the locals to fashion a tale of great beauty and depth. What makes the setting more authentic is that she writes in familiar characters like Kipling and Corbett,Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru,into the plot to combine echoes of the Raj with heartbreak and nostalgia,love and loss. The tale delights as much for the allure of the writing as for its very hill-like twists and turns.

Schoolteachers,pickle factories,young lovers,a

gin-soaked aristocrat as a landlord and Edwina-Nehru love letters are all blended into a background of nostalgia and natural beauty. Roy’s literary boundaries extend further as she brings in some hard social and political reality into a narrative that would otherwise have been somewhat rose-tinted and localised. There are characters we can remember,from Diwan Sahab the landlord to loquacious bureaucrats.

Roy does not take risks with style or structure and the book sags towards the middle,but she manages to convey continuity and change with conviction and against a memorable backdrop. Above all,she brings alive the sense of community which is so vital to small,thinly populated and intimate hill stations like Ranikhet.