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rue_baldry 's review for:
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
by Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy clearly had a lot of things she wanted to talk about in this book. It’s very long, episodic, overpopulated, with many tangents and little cohesion.
Roy’s topics include Kashmir, Hijras, the caste system, a history of several decades of Indian party politics, Bhopal, Teluga Maoists, Hindu Nationalism, shopping malls, poverty, Islamophobia, corruption, Gujarat and domestic abuse. All very noble causes which need more publicity. But too many for one story to sustain.
There were so many characters, and they appeared and disappeared and reappeared so erratically that I couldn’t keep track of them all, kept asking myself ‘who was that again?’. There were several overlong passages of what were meant to be ‘found documents’. Most of them were written in styles which were deliberately difficult to read.
There are some good characters but many ended up being representatives, not people. Her babies are particularly unrealistic. Some of the descriptions are lovely. Some of the stories are great.
There are too many lists which go on for too long. This sort of thing: “It whispered words of war into the ears of doctors and engineers, students and labourers, tailors and carpenters, weavers and farmers, shepherds, cooks and bards. They listened carefully then put down their books and implements, their needles, their chisels, their staffs, their ploughs, their cleavers and their spangled clown costumes…” etc. It’s like Roy wanted to fit everything and everyone in India into this book.
I think some of this is going to stay with me for a long time. The story has just been made to carry too much.
Roy’s topics include Kashmir, Hijras, the caste system, a history of several decades of Indian party politics, Bhopal, Teluga Maoists, Hindu Nationalism, shopping malls, poverty, Islamophobia, corruption, Gujarat and domestic abuse. All very noble causes which need more publicity. But too many for one story to sustain.
There were so many characters, and they appeared and disappeared and reappeared so erratically that I couldn’t keep track of them all, kept asking myself ‘who was that again?’. There were several overlong passages of what were meant to be ‘found documents’. Most of them were written in styles which were deliberately difficult to read.
There are some good characters but many ended up being representatives, not people. Her babies are particularly unrealistic. Some of the descriptions are lovely. Some of the stories are great.
There are too many lists which go on for too long. This sort of thing: “It whispered words of war into the ears of doctors and engineers, students and labourers, tailors and carpenters, weavers and farmers, shepherds, cooks and bards. They listened carefully then put down their books and implements, their needles, their chisels, their staffs, their ploughs, their cleavers and their spangled clown costumes…” etc. It’s like Roy wanted to fit everything and everyone in India into this book.
I think some of this is going to stay with me for a long time. The story has just been made to carry too much.