Of 19th-century Tibet, and 9/11

NEW RELEASES

Caravan to Tibet
Deepa Agarwal
Puffin
Rs 175
184 pages

In the last years of the nineteenth century, a caravan of traders sets off from the high hills of Kumaon for Tibet. They traverse dangerous passes and brave blinding snowstorms in order to carry on their traditional trade in the Tibetan markets.

Among them is 14-year-old Debu's father. Many days later, when the caravan returns, Debu is heartbroken to learn that his father was lost in one of the treacherous passes. Somehow he cannot believe it, and when a Tibetan trader turns up in the local market wearing an amulet remarkably similar to his father's, he is convinced that his father is alive.

Debu joins the next caravan to Tibet to look for his father, and the adventures follow thick and fast "" a forced stay in a monastery with a young lama who takes a fancy to him; his capture by a band of bandits led by the cruel, mysterious Nangbo gifted with magical powers; a stay in the goldfields of Thok Jalong; and finally ending with a heart-pounding, breathtaking horse race.

An action-packed adventure story, Caravan to Tibet teems with memorable characters.

The Good Life
by Jay McInerney
Bloomsbury
£ 4.20
400 pages

This is billed as a story of love, family and conflicting desires set in the shadow of 9/11. Luke McGavock, in the enviable position of having made more money than he can spend, has chosen to take a sabbatical in which he might recover the sense of purpose suddenly lacking in his life.

But his wife is more than up to the task of spending and very much a part of Upper East Side society, which affects their daughter in ways that he shudders to think about.

Meanwhile, Russell and Corrine Galloway have survived a separation and managed to produce, by extraordinary medical means, two children who help bind them together, even if the promise of their early years together has thinned and faded. Russell is still in publishing, though in a diminished role, while Corrine casts about for a role she might play other than mother.

These are only some of the lives transformed by the events that take place on September 11, 2001, in which McGavock and the Calloways lose a friend, and Luke and Corrine soon find themselves side by side, providing food and drink to workers at the devastated site, while feeling lost anywhere else.

This book is about the love that develops between them, and about people battered by loss and betrayal, but determined to discover what the good life truly is.