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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Complicated
It just wasn’t my cup of tea. Reminds me very much of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 years of Solitude.
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A spectacular novel could have been written out of the first chapter. The fragmented style of the middle emotionally distances the reader from what could have been heart-wrenching, and turns it into a parade of detached, postmodern suffering - surely the goal; but it didn't work for me.
I liked it, although admittedly if I had a better understanding of world history and geography I probably would have felt like I understood what was happening more deeply. But I liked the world, especially around Anjum and her community, and the prose was often beautiful.
I have to confess to being deeply disappointed with this book. The God of Small Things is not of my top ten favourite books and, having waited 20 years for Roy to write a follow up, my expectations were high. It started out well enough but by the time I was a third of the way through it was clear this wasn’t going to make the grade for me.
At times I very nearly stopped reading. I’m glad I didn’t. In the end the book and the story is worth the effort. But, for me, it loses its way badly in the middle. The problem as I see it is that Roy, as an activist, wants to bring in too many of the political issues that she has campaigned on in real life. I understand why she wants to do that, and the story itself, set partly
In Kashmir, is inevitably deeply political, but at times the story got lost. I'm a political scientist by training, I have absolutely no problem with politics in a novel, but it has to serve the story and I didn’t think that was always the case here.
And this made it difficult to follow the myriad of plot lines that, in the end, brought the characters together. In the final chapter those threads come together so beautifully that I was reminded here of the magic of The God of Small Things. So, if you decide to read it and feel like giving up, as I did, somewhere in the middle, I recommend persevering- it’s worth it.
At times I very nearly stopped reading. I’m glad I didn’t. In the end the book and the story is worth the effort. But, for me, it loses its way badly in the middle. The problem as I see it is that Roy, as an activist, wants to bring in too many of the political issues that she has campaigned on in real life. I understand why she wants to do that, and the story itself, set partly
In Kashmir, is inevitably deeply political, but at times the story got lost. I'm a political scientist by training, I have absolutely no problem with politics in a novel, but it has to serve the story and I didn’t think that was always the case here.
And this made it difficult to follow the myriad of plot lines that, in the end, brought the characters together. In the final chapter those threads come together so beautifully that I was reminded here of the magic of The God of Small Things. So, if you decide to read it and feel like giving up, as I did, somewhere in the middle, I recommend persevering- it’s worth it.
The back cover blurb suggests that Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness "reinvents what a novel can do and can be." I get the hyperbole is deliberate, but I'm not sure why Penguin (the publisher) felt the need to oversell this sometimes brilliant, sometimes overwritten, but always passionate novel. If the 181,000 or so people on Goodreads are any indication plenty of people have been waiting patiently for this, Roy's second novel, after the barnstorming, Man-Booker winning success of her 1997 debut The God of Small Things. I doubt any of them came to this novel thinking, "I've waited this long so she better fucking reinvent literature as we know it!"
What the back cover doesn't say - possibly because it's likely to frighten readers rather than attract them - is that The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, contrary to the title, is a very angry novel. For over twenty years Roy has been a human rights activist fighting against any number of anti-globalist issues but in particular providing support for the independence of Kashmir from India. Whatever anger she has bottled up over these issues streams forth in this book where, with great passion and fury, she advocates for the separation of India from its northern state repeatedly pointing out the crimes committed by India against the Kashmiri people.
While Roy's views on the question of Kashmir is a driving force of the novel it's not the books only focus or subject for Roy's anger. She also explores India through the eyes of the marginalised, those living in poverty, those born into a low caste, those who don't identify with their biological sex. The most memorable of these outsiders is Anjum, a transgender person who was born with male and female genitalia and identifies as a woman. She's a complicated character, all ego and attention seeking, yet fuelled by a strong moral core. When Anjum leaves the House of Dreams (a place for Hijra like herself) she decides to create Paradise in the local cemetery. She attracts a misfit group of people, fringe members of society who transform her ramshackle home beside the graves of Anjum's departed family into a sprawling communal home.
One of the people who comes to Anjum is Tilo a young woman with a story of her own that is wrapped up in Kashmir and its independence. A good deal of the book follows Tilo's story and specifically the men who intersect her life, men who love her deeply even if she only has feelings for one of them. Yes, the Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a love story, a love quadrangle (sort of) that also involves freedom fighters, Islamic militants and sadistic army officials who kill and torture on a whim.
I did like this book, in fact I loved huge chunks of it. It is angry, lashing out against the Indian Government - Modi does not come off well - and the religious hatred whipped up by any number of incidents and politicians that more often than not result in the death of innocent people. Because I know no better I have to accept that what Roy describes in Kashmir, the oppression of the Muslim population, the disappearances, the daily funeral marches, the tortures and brutal deaths are accurate, an ongoing and contemporary atrocity.
But it is overlong. The love story at the heart of the novel never worked for me partly because it's hard to grow attached to characters at that intimate a level when so much awful is on display and partly the non-linear nature of the narrative - the promised reinvention of literature - gives the book a hazy focus. Time and place is muddled, stories are repeated, and the forward jumps in time reduce the dramatic tension. There's an entire section where the book becomes a mock quiz - constructed by Tilo - about the horrors of Kashmir that not only puts a park brake on the novel's momentum but feels like a writer over-egging an already stuffed pudding.
Still I did like this book. Anjum - moreso than Tilo - is a fantastic and layered character and her story resonated with me, powerful and funny and inspiring. Roy astutely turns the focus back on Anjum in the last third and her ability to bring people together, people who might not ordinarily mix even if they are all outsiders, imbues the book with a sense of hope. Arundhati Roy may be angry with India's Government, the corruption, the treatment of Kashmir, but if this book says one thing clearly and loudly it's that she still loves the people, that in the people she finds beauty and compassion and hope.
“Around her the city sprawled for miles. Thousand-year-old sorceress, dozing, but not asleep, even at this hour. Grey flyovers snaked out of her Medusa skull, tangling and untangling under the yellow sodium haze. Sleeping bodies of homeless people lined their high, narrow pavements, head to toe, head to toe, head to toe, looping into the distance. Old secrets were folded into the furrows of her loose, parchment skin. Each wrinkle was a street, each street a carnival. Each arthritic joint a crumbling amphitheatre where stories of love and madness, stupidity, delight and unspeakable cruelty had been played out for centuries. But this was to be the dawn of her resurrection. Her new masters wanted to hide her knobby, varicose veins under imported fishnet stockings, cram her withered tits into saucy padded bras and jam her aching feet into pointed high-heeled shoes. They wanted her to swing her stiff old hips and re-route the edges of her grimace upwards into a frozen, empty smile. It was the summer Grandma became a whore.”
What the back cover doesn't say - possibly because it's likely to frighten readers rather than attract them - is that The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, contrary to the title, is a very angry novel. For over twenty years Roy has been a human rights activist fighting against any number of anti-globalist issues but in particular providing support for the independence of Kashmir from India. Whatever anger she has bottled up over these issues streams forth in this book where, with great passion and fury, she advocates for the separation of India from its northern state repeatedly pointing out the crimes committed by India against the Kashmiri people.
While Roy's views on the question of Kashmir is a driving force of the novel it's not the books only focus or subject for Roy's anger. She also explores India through the eyes of the marginalised, those living in poverty, those born into a low caste, those who don't identify with their biological sex. The most memorable of these outsiders is Anjum, a transgender person who was born with male and female genitalia and identifies as a woman. She's a complicated character, all ego and attention seeking, yet fuelled by a strong moral core. When Anjum leaves the House of Dreams (a place for Hijra like herself) she decides to create Paradise in the local cemetery. She attracts a misfit group of people, fringe members of society who transform her ramshackle home beside the graves of Anjum's departed family into a sprawling communal home.
One of the people who comes to Anjum is Tilo a young woman with a story of her own that is wrapped up in Kashmir and its independence. A good deal of the book follows Tilo's story and specifically the men who intersect her life, men who love her deeply even if she only has feelings for one of them. Yes, the Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a love story, a love quadrangle (sort of) that also involves freedom fighters, Islamic militants and sadistic army officials who kill and torture on a whim.
I did like this book, in fact I loved huge chunks of it. It is angry, lashing out against the Indian Government - Modi does not come off well - and the religious hatred whipped up by any number of incidents and politicians that more often than not result in the death of innocent people. Because I know no better I have to accept that what Roy describes in Kashmir, the oppression of the Muslim population, the disappearances, the daily funeral marches, the tortures and brutal deaths are accurate, an ongoing and contemporary atrocity.
But it is overlong. The love story at the heart of the novel never worked for me partly because it's hard to grow attached to characters at that intimate a level when so much awful is on display and partly the non-linear nature of the narrative - the promised reinvention of literature - gives the book a hazy focus. Time and place is muddled, stories are repeated, and the forward jumps in time reduce the dramatic tension. There's an entire section where the book becomes a mock quiz - constructed by Tilo - about the horrors of Kashmir that not only puts a park brake on the novel's momentum but feels like a writer over-egging an already stuffed pudding.
Still I did like this book. Anjum - moreso than Tilo - is a fantastic and layered character and her story resonated with me, powerful and funny and inspiring. Roy astutely turns the focus back on Anjum in the last third and her ability to bring people together, people who might not ordinarily mix even if they are all outsiders, imbues the book with a sense of hope. Arundhati Roy may be angry with India's Government, the corruption, the treatment of Kashmir, but if this book says one thing clearly and loudly it's that she still loves the people, that in the people she finds beauty and compassion and hope.
“Around her the city sprawled for miles. Thousand-year-old sorceress, dozing, but not asleep, even at this hour. Grey flyovers snaked out of her Medusa skull, tangling and untangling under the yellow sodium haze. Sleeping bodies of homeless people lined their high, narrow pavements, head to toe, head to toe, head to toe, looping into the distance. Old secrets were folded into the furrows of her loose, parchment skin. Each wrinkle was a street, each street a carnival. Each arthritic joint a crumbling amphitheatre where stories of love and madness, stupidity, delight and unspeakable cruelty had been played out for centuries. But this was to be the dawn of her resurrection. Her new masters wanted to hide her knobby, varicose veins under imported fishnet stockings, cram her withered tits into saucy padded bras and jam her aching feet into pointed high-heeled shoes. They wanted her to swing her stiff old hips and re-route the edges of her grimace upwards into a frozen, empty smile. It was the summer Grandma became a whore.”
I have started this book three times. Alwys seem to put it down before I finish and after a year I have to start at the beginning. I hvae mostly loved Roy's writing and this was reviewed as a good book - but for some reason I have not finished it. . . . Will keep it around and someday may finish so I can review it.
Objectively a good book but just couldn't get into it, so abandoned about half way through.