Reading Slothfully

Well, this was a tough slog. It wasn't a bad book, but I think I'm no longer interested in rich, privileged assholes who waste oodles of time thinking they're better than everyone else and idling away their time with drinking and gambling. Of course, that wasn't the point of the book, just the primary "action", so to speak.

We have a ship going to Bombay carrying Bill Wainwright, a rich playboy who is trying to go straight. He's going to India on the family business. His fellow passengers include Baroness Stephani, who is actually a procurer; Marchesa Carviglia, a former procuree of the Baroness, who managed to snag a prominent Italian Fascist, and who is off for a fling away from her impotent and controlling spouse; and Mrs. Flora Trollope, known to her friends as Stitch, an Australian by birth and the sister of the Maharani of Chandragar. The two sisters hate each other, but poor Stitch married a scoundrel who is in jail and needs someone off of whom to live.

Then we have a train car coming from the Indian hinterlands to Bombay. Its passengers include a "missionary", Homer (Buck) Merrill, who is traveling with his son, soon to be sent back to the U.S. to be educated properly, and a young, blind, village boy named Ali, who is to be treated in Bombay by a famous visiting surgeon to cure his blindness. There is a problem on the train with the "royal" car, and the passenger of that car, Carol Halma, aka Olga Janssen, a former Miss Minnesota and "actress", ends up in Buck Merrill's car with the two boys.

So, anyway, the folks on the boat and the folks on the train all meet up at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. It seems that , there are numerous interconnections between these folks. It turns out that the good and righteous Buck Merrill, was the best friend and school chum of Bill Wainright, back in the day. Then too, Carol Halma, was once the wife of Bill. She's still a bit of a party girl, but wonders if there isn't something better...or something. Carol has oodles of jewelry from the likes of Jelly, the Maharajah of Jellipore, and from Mr. Botlivala. Buck has some fits of indisposition on the train, and Carol helps him work through them.

........Huh? I seem to have broken off in mid thought, and now some three months later, I'm not remembering all that much. Whatever, it's a convoluted, but somewhat engaging story. Not at the level of Jane Austen or Dostoyevsky, but then, what is?