draped with acclaim and praise on the jacket, i had fairly high hopes for this book. i'm not certain if it's my frame of mind at the moment, or something more inherent to the text itself, but i was disappointed.
set in a back-and-forth time scheme ranging from WWII Europe to 1980's India, the story focused on 2 generations of a famiily and their close associates. these characters, to greater and lesser degrees, all experience a sense of being displaced in whatever social culture they happen to be currently entangled in.
if this book has a theme, i would say it is non-belongingness, which just did not resonate as expected. these characters all encounter significant turmoil both in their personal lives as well as in the growing political unrest raging around them and we are able to see how they cope with, or fail to acknowledge, these changes, the story moves back and forth in time and place in a way that isn't so much confusing as it is distracting and vaguely annoying.
i failed to find the main characters particularly sympathetic or engaging in terms of their internal struggle, or their responses to the upheaval in their surroundings. the most interesting emotional connection in this book seemed to be between the elderly judge and his dog. plowed through it, but didn't much enjoy it.
Grove Press (2006), Paperback, 384 pages
tags: India, romance, politics, immigration
1 comment:
I've been meaning to read this one, as it was a Booker Prize winner and I try to read those. Hrm. I can't seem to get interested in it.
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