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steveatwaywords's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
There are moments and tales of real poignancy in this collection of culturally intersectional desperations. Mukherjee stretches his experience to reach into scenarios across the planet, across politics and economic status, across legal borders--in the end, a reader cannot hope to guess what unspoken chapter of emigration and collision will be exposed next. For all of this, there are few works like it.
At the same time, we cannot guess the outcomes to such moments of abrupt circumstance. One of his off-stage characters describes the world as one of fractals, and this is as good a description of the narrative closures as we are likely to receive. Do not expect, then, that morally focused characters will find justice, that mistakes will be forgiven, even that a journey will find its end. Mukherjee's resolutions are often far more subtle, either open-staging a place for new tragedy or turning unexpectedly into a brief peaceful rest. As life offers no promises, nor do these stories.
While raw in this way (some of the characters and settings are affrontive and unsettling), unless readers allow the tales to dictate their own rules, most of these stories may feel unsatisfying. The connections and resolutions they offer are in micro-moments, in an emotive response, in a step inward to something new. This is, perhaps, as it should be. My own expectations for story are grounded in a Western patriarchal progression of narrative: no wonder, then, that I shift uneasily at times as I encounter her brutal and broken male perspectives, her "casting back" at my idealistic naivete for the fairy tale.
At the same time, we cannot guess the outcomes to such moments of abrupt circumstance. One of his off-stage characters describes the world as one of fractals, and this is as good a description of the narrative closures as we are likely to receive. Do not expect, then, that morally focused characters will find justice, that mistakes will be forgiven, even that a journey will find its end. Mukherjee's resolutions are often far more subtle, either open-staging a place for new tragedy or turning unexpectedly into a brief peaceful rest. As life offers no promises, nor do these stories.
While raw in this way (some of the characters and settings are affrontive and unsettling), unless readers allow the tales to dictate their own rules, most of these stories may feel unsatisfying. The connections and resolutions they offer are in micro-moments, in an emotive response, in a step inward to something new. This is, perhaps, as it should be. My own expectations for story are grounded in a Western patriarchal progression of narrative: no wonder, then, that I shift uneasily at times as I encounter her brutal and broken male perspectives, her "casting back" at my idealistic naivete for the fairy tale.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Trafficking and Violence
Moderate: Grief, Racism, Sexism, Colonisation, Death, and Deportation
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