But to Seth, who first stayed with them as a 17-year-old and became, in effect, the son they never had, these two seemingly unremarkable people were an extraordinary couple.

It felt like she was being made to yield up all the privacy of her naked self to a man she had just met in a newsagents. The problem for me was that Trevor packs too much exotic drama into his narrator's interim life, in particular her experience as a prostitute in a brothel in Africa. In Reading Turgenev, a lonely country girl escapes her loveless marriage in the arms of a bookish young man.Here is a quick description and cover image of book Two Lives written by Vikram Seth which was published in 2005-10-25. Though he spoke no German, he was accepted at a dental institute in Berlin and lived in several lodgings there, the last of them a house owned by a Mrs Caro, whose elder daughter Henny was initially against the arrangement - "Don't take the black man," she warned her mother. Mrs D is a kind, childless woman who wants to help others; though the motivation of her partner, Quinty, is solely financial. Anyway, I appreciate that Malcolm has encouraged me to read a couple more of Stein books (Everybody's Biography and Wars I Have Seen), and reminded me that this kind of meandering, vaguely Sebald-esque thing (complete with grainy photos!

Here, Trevor explores the depths of defamiliarisation, so that reality and imagination become threateningly fused. He has also written five books of poetry, an opera libretto, a book of other libretti, and two highly regarded works of non-fiction, From Heaven Lake and Two Lives.There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions. It’s never filled with overwrought metaphors, but is spare and elegant, instead and filled with the deepest compassion for humanity.

Instead, he focuses on the personal stories of his friends and colleagues who, like him, are trying to keep their lives together when everything descends into chaos.Complications ensue on their wedding night when it becomes obvious that Elmer will never be able to give Mary Louise the child that both he and she long to have, for Elmer is not only bald and paunchy, he is impotent as well. Like Anne Frank’s letters, Post Box Kashmir:Two Lives in Letters provides an insight into the minds and hearts of teenage girls undergoing momentous points in history. That said, I found I liked this book less and less the more I read and the more I read the more I wondered who are you I wondered to talk like this.

Trevor's main characters in the two novellas contained in this book are both women unhappy in their lives, who struggle with traumas: this is a typical character for Trevor, though she never becomes a stereotype. Trevor tells us each woman's story as he moves from the present to the past and back to the present once again. It was very hard for Meghan to choose between Paul, a kind man or her old lover and also a father of her daughter Beth. His writing is so subtle and understated, and yet he manages to capture the fragility, the vulnerability and the randomality of the human experience. Two Lives focuses on the love story between Seth’s uncle, Shanti Behari Seth, and his German-Jewish great aunt, Hennerle Gerda Caro.

Vikram Seth is the acclaimed author of three novels: The Golden Gate, An Equal Music and A Suitable Boy, one of the most beloved and widely read books of recent times.