My humble synopsis of a Booker winning ’classic’
Story line - Claustrophobic, sepulcharal, joyless, pessimistic, and too close to the authors life to be comforatble, as I am a great admirer of her mother’s.
language - like the curates egg - good in parts, the rest of the prose is choked in similies like a tiny scoop of vanilla icecream swathed in a saree like dressing of bitter choclate sauce :-)
I also have strong resentment about the underlying current of incest which climaxes at the end.
Definitely not my choice to hand over to my child to read as a ’classic’ neither to leave around lying on the coffee table.I still live in a world where a novel is really a story , a fiction NOT bits and pieces of the authors life strung together and the ugly side of life put in so obviously to shock a genteel reader from the western realm of the earth and earn his/her plaudits.
For me fiction is still Enid Blyton....
fiction is still Richmal Crompton
fiction is the Thorn Birds
fiction is Sherlock Holmes
Fiction is Gone with the Wind
Fiction is James Hadley Chase even
Fiction is Agatha Christie
Fiction is R K NArayan
or Ruskin Bond even
I have stonrg objection where a work of fiction which would leave the taste of bile in my mouth and keep me away from my dinner.
Like mistry’s Fine Balance or God of small things............
For me Ms.Roys book is a no show.