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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Set in India in our time and living memory, this is two stories, seemingly unconnected at first. The first is about an intersex person, a hijra, who desperately wants to be a mother, and the second about a woman involved with the Kashmiri conflict. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author herself. Once or twice I wondered whether I might stop listening and find something else, but Roy’s voice was mesmerising, and in the end I enjoyed the way the two plots finally came together in this lyrical, political, character driven, vast novel.
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A very good story! I enjoyed how the author brought all the disparate pieces together, melding everything together into another one of those fantastic communities of love that everyone wants to have in the own real lives. No one in the story is perfect yet they are loved by someone, somewhere at some point in time. This author has a gift for creating world's that the reader can see, touch, taste and smell.
I would have preferred this book in the hard copy version verses the audio I listened to. Too complicated with many characters, foreign names, Kashmiri, Indian and Pakistani politics and events occurring out of chronology. I enjoyed the characters and their stories, but found parts of the book tedious. Interesting observations on Hindu vs Muslim relations in India, caste systems and civil unrest. Felt a little like the same way I did after reading Satanic Verses, however. Would help to know a lot more about Indian history and politics in advance.
I added this book to my "to read" list because of the cover and the title. I knew it would be about India/Pakistan but outside of that, I knew nothing about it.
The story spans the life of Anjum and the people who intersect her life for good and for bad. I found it difficult to follow at times because of the names, and with the audiobook, it was difficult to note when the story was refocusing on a new set of characters. I'm guessing that would have been easier with the physical layout of a book to catch those changes.
Anjum and her compatriots lived through tumultuous times and yet they found happiness - utmost happiness. I can hope to find that too.
The story spans the life of Anjum and the people who intersect her life for good and for bad. I found it difficult to follow at times because of the names, and with the audiobook, it was difficult to note when the story was refocusing on a new set of characters. I'm guessing that would have been easier with the physical layout of a book to catch those changes.
Anjum and her compatriots lived through tumultuous times and yet they found happiness - utmost happiness. I can hope to find that too.
The writing is gorgeous and the story heart breaking
But it was hard to follow partly because of my ignorance of this history/politics and partly because of the style
So I didn't enjoy reading it very much
But it was hard to follow partly because of my ignorance of this history/politics and partly because of the style
So I didn't enjoy reading it very much
Unlike almost everyone I know, I entered this book without any expectations and purely because I was intrigued by 'Happiness' and 'Ministry' in the title. A small thing, but seemed very significant to me, because the Indian government has not dedicated a ministry to happiness yet, so it only made sense that someone ought to do it.
This, and other well-known facts about the Indian government, presented with fearless honesty, painted a brilliant picture of where happiness does or does not fit in an contemporary Indian citizen's life.
I read Arundhati for the very first time, that too in a book that encompassed a subject as vast as happiness through stories that could not have travelled farther from the happiness as we know it. To read Arundhati's language was to become cotton: ride on the shoulders of a tall creature, see the world from a place high enough to send chills all over my body, and then fall from that place into a puddle of water, only to emerge carrying twice my weight as water- absorbed in my freshly frozen fibres.
I travelled to Old Delhi through the book, one of my favourite places in Delhi, and it made me yearn to go back there again and dance to the tunes of Nizammudin's qawalli sessions. I could not help but notice the similarities between Tilo and myself, and Tilo and Arundhati. The same inveterate aura of being drawn to shadows in a new day and being absorbed by them as they travel to nowhere at high noon.
The only reason I could compare Arundhati and Tilo was in the chapter when she described her mother's last day in the hospital.
Anyhow, a lot of readers around me told me that they were disappointed with the ending. I thought it completed a circle. Miss Udaya Jebeen was an obvious metaphor from the time she had appeared in the crowd, and continued to be that throughout to the last word. I felt that was her only role, to be that obvious humanisation of a new hope that everyone gathers around, or to quote 'forms a protective battle formation around'.
Things I did not like:
The pause in the situation, and entering the flashback of another flashback. That's a storytelling enjoyed best with a writing style that snaps you out of dreariness every few paragraphs, so that when your head lolls over to the other side, it realises with a jolt and finds itself an other side, of reality. Arundhati could have achieved that pace, but she had to achieve another effect.
The effect of falling in your sleep, for a very very long time and not being able to get up.
She did achieve that spectacularly.
There was another speculation that bothered me throughout: had she merely tried to serve her loose thoughts about Kashmir, her mother, about knowing her own self, about friendship in college, about saffronisation, about Indian government; and sown them together by beginning the story with one of the protagonists who just 'happened' to be transgender? (Given that such characters are the perfect bait to charm the young ones who are too hell-bent on the idea of an inclusive society to know if they're being tricked)
Or did she perhaps try to place only and only those characters that could be the worst nightmare of cow-worshipping bureaucrats that are writing the Benjamin Button story of the Indian society?
This, and other well-known facts about the Indian government, presented with fearless honesty, painted a brilliant picture of where happiness does or does not fit in an contemporary Indian citizen's life.
I read Arundhati for the very first time, that too in a book that encompassed a subject as vast as happiness through stories that could not have travelled farther from the happiness as we know it. To read Arundhati's language was to become cotton: ride on the shoulders of a tall creature, see the world from a place high enough to send chills all over my body, and then fall from that place into a puddle of water, only to emerge carrying twice my weight as water- absorbed in my freshly frozen fibres.
I travelled to Old Delhi through the book, one of my favourite places in Delhi, and it made me yearn to go back there again and dance to the tunes of Nizammudin's qawalli sessions. I could not help but notice the similarities between Tilo and myself, and Tilo and Arundhati. The same inveterate aura of being drawn to shadows in a new day and being absorbed by them as they travel to nowhere at high noon.
The only reason I could compare Arundhati and Tilo was in the chapter when she described her mother's last day in the hospital.
Anyhow, a lot of readers around me told me that they were disappointed with the ending. I thought it completed a circle. Miss Udaya Jebeen was an obvious metaphor from the time she had appeared in the crowd, and continued to be that throughout to the last word. I felt that was her only role, to be that obvious humanisation of a new hope that everyone gathers around, or to quote 'forms a protective battle formation around'.
Things I did not like:
The pause in the situation, and entering the flashback of another flashback. That's a storytelling enjoyed best with a writing style that snaps you out of dreariness every few paragraphs, so that when your head lolls over to the other side, it realises with a jolt and finds itself an other side, of reality. Arundhati could have achieved that pace, but she had to achieve another effect.
The effect of falling in your sleep, for a very very long time and not being able to get up.
She did achieve that spectacularly.
There was another speculation that bothered me throughout: had she merely tried to serve her loose thoughts about Kashmir, her mother, about knowing her own self, about friendship in college, about saffronisation, about Indian government; and sown them together by beginning the story with one of the protagonists who just 'happened' to be transgender? (Given that such characters are the perfect bait to charm the young ones who are too hell-bent on the idea of an inclusive society to know if they're being tricked)
Or did she perhaps try to place only and only those characters that could be the worst nightmare of cow-worshipping bureaucrats that are writing the Benjamin Button story of the Indian society?
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated