A review by jessica_lam
Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

dark sad medium-paced

2.5

Wealthy, hedonistic people do bad things and the poor pay for it as dog-eat-dog collateral, Kapoor writes a story mostly spanning 5 years (though with generational trauma stemming from years before) from multiple perspectives: Ajay, a poor boy from the mountains who under difficult circumstances fall into service of Sunny Wadia, the richer-than-God, once-naive only son of magnate Bunty Wadia who strives to outdo his father; Neda Kapur, an upper caste journalist who becomes romantically involved with Sunny; and then, much much later on, Sunil Rastogi, the boogeyman character who is the catalyst for the last quarter of the book through abject violence.  

While Kapoor is a good writer, the story is so dark that it's hard to push through without coming up for breath so if you're looking for something to get you out of a reading rut, this isn't it. Issues tackled include sexual violence, class, an excessive amount of drugs and alcohol, gentrification, land use, murder, etc. It's so dark as to be predictable - of course the worst case scenario is going to happen, especially if the character in person is destitude.

I also know you're supposed to feel some sort of sympathy for Sunny given the extensive chapters from his perspective (surprise: there's bystander trauma because of course the actual violence happens to the unnamed poor) and I just... don't (even Neda, to some extent, I get exhausted by). It's tough to when there are so few redeeming moments for these characters. It's honestly just a long way down of bearing witness to depravity. Blech.   
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