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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
“How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.”
This novel should have a much higher rating than it does. My first of Roy’s work, and will not be my last.
This novel should have a much higher rating than it does. My first of Roy’s work, and will not be my last.
I had a really hard time getting into this, but now I'm pretty sorry it's over.
4.5/5
He remembered wondering at the time what kind of person it was that got on best with her mother when she was hallucinating on her deathbed in an ICU while she, the daughter, masqueraded as her stenographer.It's always interesting when the top reviews of a work contain fervent declarations of patriotism/nationalism/what have you bent on castigating the aforementioned work for who knows what reason. I'm in the middle of watching a documentary on [a:Ousmane Sembène|71267|Ousmane Sembène|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1283690170p2/71267.jpg], who's had at least one work banned in both his homeland and the land of his homeland's colonizer, and I wouldn't be surprised if his films, each setting out to criticize one or more nation states/ideological hegemonies were met with similar civilian consternation. As if a legitimate state, guaranteed to have been legitimized in this day in age by bloodshed both known & unknown (until all the indigenous people get their lands back and people realize Palestinian Jewish people exist, no, you don't have a counterclaim to stand on), needed protection in the realm of the creative. I'm not singling out India or Pakistan or China or anyone else involved in this book's focus on Kashmir for special attention, mind you. They all have a long way to go before they can even cast the smallest sliver of a shadow on the US in terms of sheer success at being a military industrial parasite of the world entire.
Dear Doctor,
Nothing, really. I just wanted to say hello. Actually—there is something. Imagine having to smash your brother's lungs to please your mother. Would you call that normal human activity?
[S]he had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.On one level, Arundhati Roy is fucking with you. She shows you the seeming facsimile of cheap laughs and tragedy porn, but then refuses to follow through. She makes numerous references to a broad international learning filled with solidarity born in the bonds of Babel-transcending literature, and then casts off the label of literature entirely. She draws you down into a wonderland of flowers growing through rigor-mortised fingers and conscientious protesters waking and dying and dying yet again, and then forgoes the childhood playground indoctrination of the forgiveness of martyrs for the righteously infuriated revenge of mortals. In other words, she knows what the world wants to be sold of this one particular component of itself, this apparently beautiful and apparently complicated and apparently dangerous land that she has chosen to describe with her pen. She knows because she's done it before, but whether she will do so again or is even bother to try is doubtful. The worlds in which the nothing that happens is worth writing about do not like hearing the words of the worlds that are open wounds, leastwise not in literature that refuses to practice human sacrifice of the customary demographics for the sake of character development for the customary demographic. Profit margins from tourism, the film industry, and weapons racketeering, yes. Propaganda other than what white patriarchal (cis/hetero)normative capitalism force feeds you, no.
I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there's lots to write about. That can't be done in Kashmir. It's not sophisticated, what happens here. There's too much blood for good literature.
Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated?
Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?
Over the last ten years or so the field of human rights has become a perfectly respectable and even lucrative profession.Be honest with me, now. Does it disturb you that a character whom Anglo audiences would call an intersex trans woman (most don't even try to get that right) gets center stage? Would it disappoint you that she and her countless comrades in h*jra arms (by the way, that term, while popular in the Anglo comprehension (or perhaps as a result of this), is both shorthand for 10+ regional terms and a slur, so don't go throwing it around if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about) go through their own share of shit but never ever ever get sacrificed for the sake of the cis or the het plot contextualization? I could mark it as a spoiler, but frankly, I want people who expect trans and gay and bi and queer at large to make a bigger splash on screen while dead or tortured or made to feel worthless in some manner than alive to put this book down in disgust and walk away upon learning that this won't happen. I make them sick, they make me sick, a destabilization of the right to live and liberty and the pursuit of happiness persists enough to make some think that the fact that one can get away with the murder of trans people in 49 of the 50 US states is kinda fucked up. Political, no? Since when did combating the normalization of genocide become controversial.
They made sure that the banner with the demand for Hindi to be declared the national language was out of frame, because both film-makers agreed it was a somewhat regressive demand. But they felt that bald men with masks provided good visual texture for their film, and ought not to be passed over.
Every village, every locality, had its own graveyard.For all that, this did not prove a favorite. It would have been the first of the year if it had, which goes to show how increasingly particular I've become in my old age of the mid-twenties. For one thing, the glut of nonfiction made me lose my grip on who was doing what and why should anyone care, and while I appreciate a good free flow of interweaving and not a slight amount of sardonic fury, [b:Defiance|153596|Defiance|Carole Maso|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172251470l/153596._SY75_.jpg|1353659] combined with [b:The Woman from Tantoura|17678418|The Woman from Tantoura A Palestinian Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)|Radwa Ashour|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1367226412l/17678418._SY75_.jpg|13086736] with a dash of [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747]'s structural integrity this was not. Chalk it up to yet another display of my piss poor knowledge with regards to yet another sector of the globe, but there's also the matter that, since the day [b:The God of Small Things|9777|The God of Small Things|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590282886l/9777._SY75_.jpg|810135] was published, Roy has churned out nothing but nonfiction, and TGoSM was a microcosm compared to THoUTH attempts to encompass an entire country and one of its would-be colonizers.
The ones that didn't grew anxious about seen as collaborators.
Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)
The two women stepped out of the hotel and into the streets of the city that came alive only when it had to bury its dead.Deep down, I am also probably a glad partaker of good ol' tragedy porn, and as much as I attempt to nicely and deeply construct such an engagement as Roy wrenching my heart out of my chest and forcing me to watch it bleed, this time Roy wasn't having it, and so I would not award the book five stars out of full honesty. This sucks, but I'm comparing Roy to Roy out of my own biased evaluations, mind you, and minimally to everyone else. Four point five translates to ten or more in the regular sector, where politics are hush and humanity is white and everyone has the right to characterize everyone else as little more than walking genitals or so help me someone's going to burn. Give me ten other books teetering in the literature sector where the main character isn't cis, and I'll draw you up a reasonable comparison, I really will. Bonus points if the author is actually trans, cause if Roy is how I imagine her to be, she is more than aware of her role as a mere placeholder for those who are being slaughtered at too rapid a rate to launch their narratives on as worldwide a platform as hers.
One kind of world flew over another kind of world without troubling to stop and ask the time of day.
And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that what I said was true.Let them who knows the difference between extermination and self-humanization cast the first stone.
-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Arundhati Roy narrates this 'ministry of happiness' in a violent world only in the way that she could write it. As a reader, I held my breath for our protagonists, amidst the tragedy and trauma until the very last page, and in that sense (as in life) it is hard to predict what will happen next. It is definitely a dense read, as if Roy didn't want any confusion or any assumptions to be made about the who, where and why of this story. The book is teeming.
What I appreciate most is Roy's writing style, which is really a playful signature. Clearly her own, and with no pretence to be neutral either.
It is a historical account, and while reading, I was wondering for whom?
Worth mentioning that I've had the physical book for about 6 years, and only recently decided to read it together with the audiobook. My rating is four-stars for the immersive experience (assistance).
What I appreciate most is Roy's writing style, which is really a playful signature. Clearly her own, and with no pretence to be neutral either.
It is a historical account, and while reading, I was wondering for whom?
Worth mentioning that I've had the physical book for about 6 years, and only recently decided to read it together with the audiobook. My rating is four-stars for the immersive experience (assistance).
Disappointed. after such a long time between fiction novels I was hoping for the same magic as before. I couldn’t finish this one - two stars instead of 1 because her writing is still so poignant and lyrical, even if the story didn’t capture me
This was very interesting. I don't know much about Indian history post WWII and independence, so it was nice to read a book that was set in the more modern world. There's a lot I didn't know about Muslim-Hindu relations and Kashmir. The story itself is beautifully written of course, and I loved the way all the different stories entwined.
Like many I started to read this because I loved her other book. But to my surprise Kashmir was a big part of the plot and it put me right back there. You see I was there in 1993 and was one of the tourists who was terrorized by Afghan militants. I survived. The Norwegians she talks about in the book were not so lucky. The guys were kidnapped and beheaded in the same area where they found us.
We stayed a few weeks because the two roads out of Kashmir were blocked by mud and snow. We witnessed quite a few horrible things in that time. Because of what happened to us, the people of Kashmir opened up to us. This book affirms what we were told en witnessed and gave it some background. So this book was not the holiday read I expected. I can't really rate the book because it hit such a personal note for me. I hope there will be a solution for Kashmir but I fear that is impossible. It truly is one of the most beautifull places on earth.
We stayed a few weeks because the two roads out of Kashmir were blocked by mud and snow. We witnessed quite a few horrible things in that time. Because of what happened to us, the people of Kashmir opened up to us. This book affirms what we were told en witnessed and gave it some background. So this book was not the holiday read I expected. I can't really rate the book because it hit such a personal note for me. I hope there will be a solution for Kashmir but I fear that is impossible. It truly is one of the most beautifull places on earth.
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes