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monasterymonochrome's review against another edition
3.0
I had a longer review here that Goodreads ate, and I don't feel particularly like trying to write it all over again. In short, this book was much darker and more brutal than I was expecting, but it deals with its difficult but important themes in a compelling way, and Sharma's unornamental, straightforward prose makes it easier to swallow as a whole than it might be otherwise. I was also impressed by what he achieved in the characters of Anita and Asha. He was able to portray the very real and devastating effects of trauma and grief on them while also making them come alive as people who are shaped by things other than being victimized. Unfortunately, I was less sold on the character of Ram, whose motivations and actions never really made sense to me; besides that, I often felt like Sharma was using his first-person narration to force me to sympathize with him when he deserved very little (if any) sympathy. I was also underwhelmed by the ending. To me, it seemed like Sharma didn't really know how he wanted to wrap things up and so tacked on a disjointed final chapter in third person that didn't particularly fit or feel satisfying. I think it should have just ended with the chapter before.
sputniksweetheart's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
pujadev's review
1.0
I'm generally kinder to Indian books, I give them a leeway that I wouldn't ordinarily give to most western novelists. This book managed to cross over waaayyy to the other side of my forgiveness, the plot itself is intriguing and perhaps more universal than we are willing to admit, but the characters are cringe worthy and you find yourself loathing the victim and the perpetrator, without sympathizing with either.
caterinaanna's review
2.0
Why is this on the 1001 list? Is it because it is set in India but not of India, dealing with a difficult subject that crosses cultures and continents? Or because it does so having been written by somebody living and working in the west, so we get to hear about it? I don't know, but [a:Rohinton Mistry|3539|Rohinton Mistry|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1238081582p2/3539.jpg] ticks all the same boxes, writes a lot better and has characters that one can actually love.
I'm afraid that, in spite of Sharma's attempts to paint Karan sympathetically, I couldn't feel pity for him, even when he was faced with Anita's revenge. Oh I could see that there were things that made his life difficult and he was, as Heaven-Ali puts it, more pathetic than evil, but that was not enough. Similarly, although it's easy to see how Anita's powerlessness led to her becoming so hard, I couldn't rejoice when she began to get the upper hand. And that, in the end, was the main problem: there was no-one in the book I could care about - even Asha left me cold - and therefore it was like reading an extended newspaper account of an interesting set of cases.
I'm afraid that, in spite of Sharma's attempts to paint Karan sympathetically, I couldn't feel pity for him, even when he was faced with Anita's revenge. Oh I could see that there were things that made his life difficult and he was, as Heaven-Ali puts it, more pathetic than evil, but that was not enough. Similarly, although it's easy to see how Anita's powerlessness led to her becoming so hard, I couldn't rejoice when she began to get the upper hand. And that, in the end, was the main problem: there was no-one in the book I could care about - even Asha left me cold - and therefore it was like reading an extended newspaper account of an interesting set of cases.
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