Kalki [Audio Cassette]

There is a woman named Teddy Ottinger: feminist, an aviatrix extraordinaire, divorced mother of two; longing to step into the shoes of her immortal hero Amelia Earhart, even at the expense of the emotional lives of her children, for whom she has little true maternal feelings and little more than a contempt for her ex-husband that had to have been there latently when she married him. Cold, but searching for love and warmth in the arms of both lesbian women and men--and something of meaning in her life via French philosophy--she is summoned to the world of Kalki, the tenth avatar of the god Vishnu, harbringer of the end of the world. But he may also be someone else; a someone else that could make this entire fantasy world she is seemingly caught up in a dangerous lie. Or, he could simply be Kalki, and the world must prepare for the End...

Vidal channels Mark Twain in our century like he always does and creates a novel of social criticism with a style and expertise of which few in history have ever equalled. But with this novel he weaves essential Hinduism and the CIA into it in a way that makes one question not just American society, but reality itself. In two hundred plus pages Vidal will have you sitting on the edge of the bed at two o'clock in the morning with this novel, not being able to put it down, yet being afraid to read the final chapters.

And make no mistake, the final chapters will blow your mind.

I highly recommend this one.

The rest of the story is similarly '70s in flavor. An Eastern/Hindu religious sect is claiming that their god Kalki has been reincarnated in the form of an ex-army soldier from the American Midwest. Their scripture claims that when Kalki returns to ride the white horse, the world will end soon afterwards; only the chosen few will survive. Naturally, since this is the '70s, everyone on the planet becomes obsessed with the Kalki story. The newsmagazine show, "60 Minutes" produces an unusually long segment investigating the Kalki phenomenon. Even Walter Cronkite gets into the act, making an amused comment on the impending end of the world.

In between the references to Watergate and the mentions of Ronald Reagan, there's a very effective religious satire going on here. Gore Vidal paints his satirical strokes a little broad at times, but when he focuses, the story soars. Fun is poked at, not only the religious cults that were springing up at the time, but many aspects of pop culture. Some of the jokes still apply today, of course. In fact, were this book to be written now, many of the shots at television news coverage wouldn't need to be changed at all.

Although the book seems most concerned with its satire, it also works extremely well as straight adventure/thriller. A genuinely enjoyable story, I simply could not figure out what direction it was going to go in next. The gothic tone of the ending slips in nicely after the whimsy of the beginning and middle. Vidal manages to get the balance of comedy and drama just right. Some moments are laugh out loud funny, while a page later one will be faced with sudden and utter horror.