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A review by fa_biene
The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
2.0
The novel starts out great: nicely developed setting, interesting characters. I could even forgive Gosh the almost fairytale-like luck some characters have...
After about half of the book, my opinion changed. I was no longer very caught up in the book and was wondering why Gosh rushed some subplots along while others dragged along rather expansively... That is why I was so disappointed, I guess.. What started as a complex, interesting novel, ended with many started subplots that weren't properly finished. (Especially, the one with Jaya felt as if Gosh was like: oh darn, I forgot to finish the story about Dinu.. Ah, I'll let Jaya go look for him so I won't go over my max. page-limit.)
These rushed plots (with no real characters like Jaya, aged Dinu etc: these weren't really developed!) made the second half of the book feel like pages were missing in between chapters.
Characters that Gosh had built nicely enough in the first half (like Dinu) got lost in the second half and just appeared to be there to tell the younger ones stories (e.g. Dinu, who's there to tell Jaya everything that happened).
Oh and that ending?! Jaya wrote the book? Oh come on! That didn't work out for me, either. It felt like an afterthought of Gosh, and didn't really fit the build-up of a book, especially because the narrator wasn't really present throughout the book.
Long story short: a very ambitious novel that has a lot of scope, but loses its depth and becomes more and more shallow.
I preferred "The Hungry Tide"
After about half of the book, my opinion changed. I was no longer very caught up in the book and was wondering why Gosh rushed some subplots along while others dragged along rather expansively... That is why I was so disappointed, I guess.. What started as a complex, interesting novel, ended with many started subplots that weren't properly finished. (Especially, the one with Jaya felt as if Gosh was like: oh darn, I forgot to finish the story about Dinu.. Ah, I'll let Jaya go look for him so I won't go over my max. page-limit.)
These rushed plots (with no real characters like Jaya, aged Dinu etc: these weren't really developed!) made the second half of the book feel like pages were missing in between chapters.
Characters that Gosh had built nicely enough in the first half (like Dinu) got lost in the second half and just appeared to be there to tell the younger ones stories (e.g. Dinu, who's there to tell Jaya everything that happened).
Oh and that ending?! Jaya wrote the book? Oh come on! That didn't work out for me, either. It felt like an afterthought of Gosh, and didn't really fit the build-up of a book, especially because the narrator wasn't really present throughout the book.
Long story short: a very ambitious novel that has a lot of scope, but loses its depth and becomes more and more shallow.
I preferred "The Hungry Tide"