Kim
Rudyard Kipling

Kim is one of the books that everybody is supposed to have read, but for whatever reason, haven't. Even when I was in a Kipling mood when young, I somehow never started on Kim.

We recently had a friend join our book club, and she suggested we read Kim. The version I got out of the library is by Penguin, which means there are lots of notes in the back. Sometimes these are annoying, but often they help illuminate the meaning of the passage, even when it is nominally in English. The drawback is that you are reading with two bookmarks, and are often flipping back and forth between the text and the notes.

As we discussed, Kipling assumed much about his audience; that they were familiar with India at least a little, and were quite familiar with the social and class structures in place then. Much of the book revolves around where Kim fits. There is the obvious conflict between acting as a guide for the holy man, and acting as a spy. In addition, there is the identity factor; is he Indian or British, and if British, Catholic or Protestant? Kim seems able to shift almost at will between the various roles.

What I enjoyed most about the book was watching Kim on the road as he travels to various places, and how he interacts with all the people and activity around him. It's so different from anything in Canada. No doubt it would be strange or even frightening for us, but for these people it was simply a part of their lives. Everybody had a role to play in the larger society. Kipling shows us this whole society, in all it's colourful, multi-layered, complex glory.

On several levels, the book is about Kim maturing and taking his real place in that society, and coping with his various choices along the way. It isn't quite a coming of age story, and it isn't quite a spy story, a love story, or a religious parable, nor an adventure story, but a subtle combination of all of these. I suspect that it's a book that one could read again and again, getting more out of it each time. As I've been going through various books stores I'll be keeping an eye out for a nice edition of this book.