Take a photo of a barcode or cover
adam_of_the_mountains 's review for:
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
by Arundhati Roy
The sprawling nature of this book was compelling and marvelous. I fell in love with a number of characters - their way of speaking, their gentleness in times of savagery, their misfit ability to connect to others and to humanity in illuminating ways.
I did, however, find this book somewhat confusing. My confusion could be, in large part, due to my ignorance when it comes to Indian politics (Kashmir included, of course). While I could connect to parts of this story or at least extrapolate certain things from the way my questions throughout the book guided my reading of it, I did think it interesting and good that Roy doesn't do a lot of hand holding of the reader. A person's lack of knowledge of this place, of these politics, didn't force Roy to spend too much expositional time on developing a context -- somewhat adding to the humanity of it all, though I did find it hard to track.
Overall, I couldn't stop reading once I let go of some of the confusion. What a book!
I did, however, find this book somewhat confusing. My confusion could be, in large part, due to my ignorance when it comes to Indian politics (Kashmir included, of course). While I could connect to parts of this story or at least extrapolate certain things from the way my questions throughout the book guided my reading of it, I did think it interesting and good that Roy doesn't do a lot of hand holding of the reader. A person's lack of knowledge of this place, of these politics, didn't force Roy to spend too much expositional time on developing a context -- somewhat adding to the humanity of it all, though I did find it hard to track.
Overall, I couldn't stop reading once I let go of some of the confusion. What a book!