A review by _inge_
Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book is not my cup of tea. The blurb promises a tale about an immigrant from India to the USA, who "keeps falling in love, not just with women, but with literature and radical politics'. What we get is a thoroughly male gaze on women and a couple of relationships, he takes us through his university years where he seems to be interested in what his supervisor and idol suggests is interesting, and the politics is not his own but the people he reads and writes about.

The things I appreciated are the flash backs to his old life in India, the cultural clashes and some of the people he researched. The book made me google things, like the photographs of Raghu Rai and the real people he talks about. I didn't care for the relationships he described - probably because he didn't really describe the women as rounded characters.

I don't know why Obama chose this as a book of the year. Maybe because he is mentioned a couple of times?