sarah_who_reads 's review for:

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh

3.0

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The beginning of this book intrigued me, mostly because it started in Myanmar/Burma with the last royal family. The end of it felt like I'd been stabbed in the heart, with WWII and its fallout over many generations. The part in the middle, though, was closer to mildly interesting. Part of that is because a lot of it takes place in India and focuses on Indian characters - which is not surprising, given the author - but because I was really it with a Myanmar/Burma focus, I found myself rushing through the India parts. (Which was hard, because the book is 550 pages long.) The part of the book that's most compelling is certainly the last part, maybe the last 1/4. I probably would have been more interested in the characters if I had more experience with India, though the final chapters connected the experience of Indians in Myanmar/Burma to contemporary politics there in helpful (and sobering) ways. But in addition to the disproportionate India focus, I was also mostly uninterested/grossed out by the army parts. While I understand they were critical to the colonial legacy, I am generally just, at best, bored (and at worst, irritated) by army stories, because they mostly glorify soldiers and armies, which is something I have no interest in doing. However, I did feel that the other best part of the book - which really runs throughout the book - is its focus on the ways colonialism forever altered the four countries in which the book took place. That epic part of the narrative was absolutely worth reading, and I would have liked to read even more of it in this book.