I am reading two books, THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler and THE HUNDRED- FOOT JOURNEY by Richard C. Morais. Why do I call it the tale of two books? Well, I noticed some similarities. The narrator in both stories are recollecting their past, while going into the future. Second very early in the book we have two deaths of very significant people in the narrators life. People that they admire that change the life of the narrator, one not as much as the other, at least where I am currently in the books, which is actually not that far.
In THE WAY OF ALL FLESH the death of Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex causes the children of their son to not visit. But more significantly the death of Mr. Pontifex is a loss in the narrators life because the narrator really admired him and watched his actions while he was growing up. Mr. Pontifex was like a grandfather to him. In THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY (spoiler alert) the two people who die that change everything are the grandfather and the mother. One naturally and one brutally, the deaths caused them to leave Bombay for London. In fact while I was reading one I realized that I joined the books together so I need to try to keep the stories straight.
The big difference so far is the language, since we are dealing with two different time period. Also we are dealing with language of Pakistani and Indian, versus the language of the English. Our writer Samuel Butler is a native of Nottinghamshire in England and it is said that the book THE WAY OF ALL FLESH is slightly autobiographical. There are even pictures throughout the book about his life.
I cannot wait to see if there are other similarities.
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