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A review by sharkybookshelf
Members Only by Sameer Pandya
Did not finish book.
Raj longs to see other non-white faces at his tennis club, but accidentally makes an extremely inappropriate joke, triggering a wave of white righteousness and kicking off a week from hell.
I expected to enjoy this book, but ended up DNFing it because the writing really didn’t work for me. Pandya covers quite a few deep topics, with shrewd observations on many aspects of the immigrant experience, assimilation and white people thinking they know best because they’ve read one book about racism. Having not come across it in a novel before, I was particularly intrigued by the exploration of cancel culture within universities and students taking offence at differing opinions. However, the story is largely delivered as Raj’s rambly, verbose internal monologue - I kept disengaging and it started to feel like a slog. A story that covers a surprising number of deep topics, without getting too heavy, but I couldn’t stand the writing (you might have better luck!).
I expected to enjoy this book, but ended up DNFing it because the writing really didn’t work for me. Pandya covers quite a few deep topics, with shrewd observations on many aspects of the immigrant experience, assimilation and white people thinking they know best because they’ve read one book about racism. Having not come across it in a novel before, I was particularly intrigued by the exploration of cancel culture within universities and students taking offence at differing opinions. However, the story is largely delivered as Raj’s rambly, verbose internal monologue - I kept disengaging and it started to feel like a slog. A story that covers a surprising number of deep topics, without getting too heavy, but I couldn’t stand the writing (you might have better luck!).