Six Days in Marapore by Paul Scott

Six Days in Marapore Reviews

• 
  Lobstergirl

  Joe MacKendrick, a young American, has come to the (imaginary) town of Marapore on the eve of the partition of India, searching for a woman his dead brother abruptly ended a love affair with. Tensions are high between the Indians and the British. Tom Gower, husband of the woman Joe is seeking, has been threatened by the locals who work at his agricultural outpost. Scott's characters are often expatriates who have been so long in India that England can no longer be considered home; after partition, they will be rootless, finding themselves in the disconcerting position of equals or less to those over whom they had just been overlords. Paired with this social and political turmoil are the racial divisions. At a dinner party where one guest is Eurasian, MacKendrick notes the others' reaction to her: "This girl is a freak. Half-European, half-Asian, the only unity she has is a sexual one. Because of the colour of her skin one's mind immediately recalls an act of union." Scott is a superb writer who makes it seem effortless.
• 
  Christopher

  As a novel about the end of the British Raj in India, this mostly overlooked work by Paul Scott does a decent job of capturing in one book what the author conveyed in his 4-volume "Raj Quartet" series, which includes "The Jewel in the Crown". The story follows an American man arriving in a small town in India shortly after the death of his brother. He seeks for a woman who had a close connection to his brother, and becomes involved with a cast of mostly British characters who are in the midst of their own crises as the dawn of Indian independence approaches. The book's themes of class and racial divides, rulers and the ruled, the end of British imperialism, violence vs law, and lost loves are typical of Paul Scott's more well-known works, but the added element here is that of an American as a central character. By itself, the character was fairly flat. But as a literary technique, it worked on some level as a method to view both the British and Indian perspectives from an outsider's point of view. However it wasn't fully successful, as we never really know what the American is thinking or feeling when it comes to the novel's major themes; we only get a glimpse of what he is thinking or feeling regarding his own condition. A decent read, but more as a supplement to other works dealing with the same time frame of British and Indian histories.
• 
  Travis Gomez

  A short novel which is a good supplement to Paul Scott's better known Raj Quartet series. While none of the characters in the main series make an appearance, the themes of racism and classism are explored effectively by making Joe Mckendrick, an American and an outsider as the main protagonist.
  
  Like the Raj Quartet books, female characters play a key role in the story while the novel also touches on the plight of Eurasians who form their own sense of identity within the context of exclusion and discrimination by both Europeans and Indians. The story follows a brisk pace which are punctuated by some beautiful sentences which invoke both a sense of nostalgia and inevitability of the march of time.
  
  "The cheating was part of the camouflage concealing the secret. He smile and said goodbye, and held out his hand half hoping that the gesture would strip the camouflage away, ...shook his hand and looked him straight in the face. An all the look meant was - goodbye. goodbye - Joe McKendrick about to depart India
• 
  Don

  Some Faulkner-like moods invoked in this story of complex, dark emotions amongst the English community in an unimportant part of the Raj in the months before its dissolution. As this group of British confront their legacy in India the sense of failure and polution becomes overwhelming - polution in the form of the secretative anglo-indian community, of women, like Dorothy Gower, living white lives and creating hatred and self-lothing because of it.
  
  One of Scott's earlier novels, I think, but the themese of his later work already strongly present.
• 
  Pascale

  A real page-turner. This book had me hooked right from the beginning and t remained tightly-paced and gripping until the very end. My exposure to Paul Scott before reading this consisted exclusively of the film adaptation of "Staying On", which has really stayed with me. I guess that the end of the British Empire resonates with me, but regardless of the subject matter I'd vouch for Scott's story-telling skills. This novel is as taut as any thriller, except it doesn't rely on grisly murders to propel itself forward.
• 
  Maura

  I liked the book well enough, but it was an intensely psychological novel of India in the waning days of the British Raj. If you aren't familiar with the time period and politics I think this book would seem a bit obscure. Readers of Paul Scott's Raj Quartet and Staying On novels would probably enjoy this. Somewhat similar to Staying On, but much darker than I recall that novel being, it examines the lives of a handful of British and Anglo-Indian characters as the days to Indian independence are counted down.
• 
  Susan

  I liked this, but didn't enjoy it as much as The Raj Quartet and Staying On. Still, an interesting evocation of the last days of the Raj in a small Indian town, among a group of British residents (and an American visitor).
• 
  Mia

  Recently discovered Paul Scott; this is the first work of his that I've read and I liked the pace, dialogue, setting. Ordered the Raj Quartet and looking forward to immersing myself into this world.
• 
  Judy

  The Raj from the master, Paul Scott of the Raj Quartet fame. I hadn't read this and it's certainly fascinating, beautifully written as always and tells the heartbreak of love across the racial divide
• 
  Peter Waller

  More or less an essay on the racial prejudices of those times.
• 
  Martha

  Early Paul Scott and good but not nearly as good as The Raj Quartet. Those books examine many of the same issues in much greater depth.
• 
  Rob Withers

  A meditation on race and class set against the final days of the British in the Indian subcontinent.
• 
  Pete

  Excellent read; strong characters as typical of Scott; a gripping story set in the penultimate days of the British Raj in 1947 (coincidentally the year of my birth). I couldn't put this book down.
• 
  Annette

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