A review by slrsmith
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

2.0

The writing was quite good, which was probably why I persevered with this one. For this novel to be a success, for me, it needed better character development. Perhaps it was a victim of its first person narration in that we can inevitably get caught up in arguments over how well we can ever really know other people, even those we love. However, I found even the narrator to be lacking in character development. I got little sense of his motivations, and his emotional reactions often left me somewhat mystified. The whole package just came off as a shallow melodrama. It reminded me of being a teenager and meditating on the mystery of the emotional life of boys as a species seperate from girls. If I'd read this book then I'd have been none the wiser. I think 2 stars is fair: it was ok. Perhaps it earns an extra 1/2 star in that the quality of writing was high enough that I actually kept reading, because normally I would not bother to finish a book like this.