Other Rooms, Other Wonders

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a collection that transported the reader to another world that they probably aren’t too familiar with it. I don’t know much of anything about the people of Pakistan or this city of Lahore, so it was a nice insight to a new cultural of people I have never experienced. However, once you get past the setting and culture you find that the stories become somewhat redundant, not only in the collection itself, but in comparison to the other collections we have read.

 

In most collection we have read at least one love story, and in most of them the love doesn’t work out. In “Saleema” and “Provide, Provide” there is the same exact theme of an older man of higher social stature marries a younger female servant although they are both already married. Neither relationship works out for either parties and everyone is unhappy and their lives are ruined. There are only so many ways an author can tell a story about a love affair and this author does it twice—in a row.

 

However, other stories differ in that they have this parable feel. “Nawabdin Electrician,” the first story of the collection definitely feels like a story with a lesson coupled with the gritty realism we saw in “Jesus’ Son.” “Nawabdin Electrician” has the thief who meets a terrible fate for what he has done and in “Saleema” the eponymous character ruins her own life and her son’s by sleeping around. There are lessons to be learned by some of these stories.

 

However, other stories such as “Alice” deal with the theme of re connecting with people and finding your place in the world. It is not so much a parable, but a story that anyone can relate to because we all want connections with people and no one likes to be alone.

The same is true in “A Spoiled Man” as Sonya tries to spread her caring around and in “Our Lady of Paris” Sohail and Helen find love with each and attempt to hang on to each other.

 

The one story that really stood out to me in terms of theme (as all the stories share a similar setting and the presence of KK Harouni) was "About a Burning Girl." In this story there is no lesson to be a learn in a parable-esque way and no feelings of love between a man and a woman. Two brothers attempt to steal their father’s fortune and pin it on one man’s wife by lighting her on father and saying she committed suicide due to her guilt. It is much darker than the others. There is no love, no sex, no caring. The characters in this story all seem very superficial and uncaring, like animals, doing anything to survive, with no emotions. This is probably because half the characters in the story are lawyers.

 

For my own short story cycle I will take from “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders the concept of not having a continuing protagonist, yet having one character pop up in each story. KK Harouni felt extremely different than Winesburg’s George Willard yet they both appear in almost all of the stories in their respective collections.

I’d like to have one ruling character in my collection who controls everyone (like Harouni), but does not play a major character role in terms of dialogue and plot development. I want a character that is larger than life so he doesn’t have to show himself to make his presence known.