kplab81 's review for:

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

4.0

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I didn't know if I would make it through Kapoor's 500+ page epic about the (fictional) Indian crime world of the early aughts, but I could not put it down. The story centers around a pivotal moment - a high-speed car chase resulting in the death of several young migrant workers - that sends ripples through the lives of three intertwined characters from divergent backgrounds. The narrative veers between the perspective of the three: Sunny Wadia, the hotheaded, ambitious son of New Delhi magnate/crime boss Bunty Wadia; Ajay, Sunny's quiet and fiercely loyal valet whom Sunny brought up from poverty; and Neda, the curious, formidable journalist who falls into Sunny's personal and professional orbit. While speaking from vastly different class experiences, each of the three is essentially trying to answer the same question: how to be their own person in a society that has already weighed, measured, and determined who they are seemingly meant to be. At different points in the narrative, these three are given opportunities to rescue each other from their predestined fates, and the decisions they make speak volumes to how they have internally answered the question: who do I want to be?

For all its excess, violence, and emotional brutality, Kapoor's story carries an undercurrent of heartbreak, which is what kept me reading. To me, the ending felt like the opening of a whole new story, which left me feeling a bit bereft, but apparently this book is meant to be the first in a trilogy (?) which means there is more story to tell - and I'm here for it.