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laurareads87's review
dark
emotional
tense
fast-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? Yes
4.5
Leila follows, and is first-person narrated by, Shalini, a mother searching for her daughter Leila. The book alternates between Leila's past -- her childhood, meeting her husband Riz, and their life together as interfaith newlyweds and new parents -- and her present, in a city starkly stratified by class, caste, and religion. This is a society in which women are treated as bearers of culture and "Purity For All" is prized above all else, and which is rapidly becoming more divided and more polluted as class divides widen. In the present, Leila is an outcast, labelled as having been 'impure' for her marriage to a man of a different religion from a different 'sector' of town (he being Muslim, she Hindu). This was really, really well done -- Akbar has managed extraordinary character development for such a short book, and has created a vision of a future that is truly disturbing in that it is profoundly believable. I did wish the ending was handled a little bit differently -- it just feels very, very abrupt after such effective build-up, though it is certainly jarring -- but I absolutely recommend this to readers of dystopian near-future fiction.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Confinement, Death, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, and Xenophobia
Minor: Alcohol, Death of parent, Homophobia, and Lesbophobia
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