Reading Wednesday
Nov. 11th, 2015 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
She Will Build Him a City by Raj Kamal Jha. A novel set in Gurgaon (a suburb of Delhi), though the book itself constantly refers to the location as "New City". Gurgaon is a planned development (I mean, there was a village there before, but nearly everything that exists there now has been built since the 1990s) of massive skyscrapers, highways, malls, etc. It's the home of many corporate headquarters, as well as many of the richest people in the world. But because it's come up so rapidly, and is populated by such incredible wealth, there are several fundamental problems with it as a city: there's almost no public transportation or sidewalks, the servants and workers of all those rich people have nowhere nearby to live, forcing them to commute hours, and social services for the poor are basically non-existent. All this in a suburb of Delhi, a city in which poverty is not exactly an issue of the past.
I'm going on and on about the setting, because Gurgaon itself is basically the fundamental premise of the whole book: that juxtaposition of extreme wealth and extreme poverty which characterizes a lot of India today, but is most extreme in this one suburb.
Okay, so as for what actually happens: She Will Build Him a City is composed of three strands of characters, who don't reveal their connection until the very end. In one plot, an elderly woman speaks in the first person to her sleeping adult daughter, retelling the story of their (fairly normal, middle-class) life. In another plot, a newborn named Orphan is abandoned in front of an orphanage. This thread involves a lot of magical realism not present in the rest of the book: Orphan talks to dogs, narrowly escapes becoming a celebrity, learns how to disappear and how to literally step into movies. Finally, an unnamed wealthy man reenacts American Psycho for India in 2015. Right down to the constant recitation of brand names and prices, and the extreme violence against animals, woman, and children which the narration calls into question, leaving it unclear how much actually happens and how much is fantasy. Well, I suppose the critique works as well for modern Gurgaon as it did for NYC in the 80s.
The narration is all stream-of-consciousness, which I really liked for about half a page, then thought it seemed rushed and full of run-on sentences that made me feel like I couldn't catch my breath, and then finally I adjusted to it enough that it was no longer noticeable.
I did like the book, although the more I think about it, the more trite I think its ultimate message is (see, the killer represents the decadence and immorality of too much wealth too fast, and the baby is the soul of the poor that the wealthy are abandoning, but the two middle-class women have to "build him a city" by being mothers! Get it?), but ah well. There are lots of memorable characters and images, and many of the side details are far more interesting than the main thrust. I'll be checking out other books by the author.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Manners & Mutiny by Gail Carriger. The fourth (and final!) book in the Finishing School series, a YA series about a finishing school for girls in a steampunk 1850s England. Except this school is in a dirigible, and the girls are taught how to be spies just as much as society ladies. Also, there are vampires, werewolves, robot dogs, and a massive plot seeking control of the government. I love this series and recommend it highly, even to people who didn't like Carriger's previous series so much.
But I have to admit that I didn't quite like this book as much as the previous three. Mostly it's simply the fact that it's the final book, and therefore there's a hell of a lot of plot to cover. So much plot, in fact, that there's very little time for emotions or relationship development. Sidheag (one of my favorite secondary characters) doesn't even appear once! And much as I understand that it would have been difficult to work her in, I was disappointed by her absence. Dimity, Agatha, Pillover, Lord Akledama – no one got much screentime. Also, there was not nearly enough Soap in this book, imho. Though I did really like the argument between him and Sophronia, which I felt addressed important points of difference between them, and the eventual resolution of their plot was adorable and fitting.
It's hard to summarize this book, because it's so much about the plot and secrets and back and forth. I will say that if what you've been longing for is dramatic action sequences, fight scenes, and the final revelation of everyone's machinations, this is the perfect book for you. If not, it's still a good resolution to the series. (Plus, I so want the sequel about Sophronia the adult spy.)
What are you currently reading?
Pyramids by Terry Pratchett. Good lord, I barely remember this book. But at least as of the opening... parts? (well, I can't say 'chapters'), in some ways it's an interesting early version of Small Gods. Which is one of my very favorite Discworld books, so I am down for that.
She Will Build Him a City by Raj Kamal Jha. A novel set in Gurgaon (a suburb of Delhi), though the book itself constantly refers to the location as "New City". Gurgaon is a planned development (I mean, there was a village there before, but nearly everything that exists there now has been built since the 1990s) of massive skyscrapers, highways, malls, etc. It's the home of many corporate headquarters, as well as many of the richest people in the world. But because it's come up so rapidly, and is populated by such incredible wealth, there are several fundamental problems with it as a city: there's almost no public transportation or sidewalks, the servants and workers of all those rich people have nowhere nearby to live, forcing them to commute hours, and social services for the poor are basically non-existent. All this in a suburb of Delhi, a city in which poverty is not exactly an issue of the past.
I'm going on and on about the setting, because Gurgaon itself is basically the fundamental premise of the whole book: that juxtaposition of extreme wealth and extreme poverty which characterizes a lot of India today, but is most extreme in this one suburb.
Okay, so as for what actually happens: She Will Build Him a City is composed of three strands of characters, who don't reveal their connection until the very end. In one plot, an elderly woman speaks in the first person to her sleeping adult daughter, retelling the story of their (fairly normal, middle-class) life. In another plot, a newborn named Orphan is abandoned in front of an orphanage. This thread involves a lot of magical realism not present in the rest of the book: Orphan talks to dogs, narrowly escapes becoming a celebrity, learns how to disappear and how to literally step into movies. Finally, an unnamed wealthy man reenacts American Psycho for India in 2015. Right down to the constant recitation of brand names and prices, and the extreme violence against animals, woman, and children which the narration calls into question, leaving it unclear how much actually happens and how much is fantasy. Well, I suppose the critique works as well for modern Gurgaon as it did for NYC in the 80s.
The narration is all stream-of-consciousness, which I really liked for about half a page, then thought it seemed rushed and full of run-on sentences that made me feel like I couldn't catch my breath, and then finally I adjusted to it enough that it was no longer noticeable.
I did like the book, although the more I think about it, the more trite I think its ultimate message is (see, the killer represents the decadence and immorality of too much wealth too fast, and the baby is the soul of the poor that the wealthy are abandoning, but the two middle-class women have to "build him a city" by being mothers! Get it?), but ah well. There are lots of memorable characters and images, and many of the side details are far more interesting than the main thrust. I'll be checking out other books by the author.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Manners & Mutiny by Gail Carriger. The fourth (and final!) book in the Finishing School series, a YA series about a finishing school for girls in a steampunk 1850s England. Except this school is in a dirigible, and the girls are taught how to be spies just as much as society ladies. Also, there are vampires, werewolves, robot dogs, and a massive plot seeking control of the government. I love this series and recommend it highly, even to people who didn't like Carriger's previous series so much.
But I have to admit that I didn't quite like this book as much as the previous three. Mostly it's simply the fact that it's the final book, and therefore there's a hell of a lot of plot to cover. So much plot, in fact, that there's very little time for emotions or relationship development. Sidheag (one of my favorite secondary characters) doesn't even appear once! And much as I understand that it would have been difficult to work her in, I was disappointed by her absence. Dimity, Agatha, Pillover, Lord Akledama – no one got much screentime. Also, there was not nearly enough Soap in this book, imho. Though I did really like the argument between him and Sophronia, which I felt addressed important points of difference between them, and the eventual resolution of their plot was adorable and fitting.
It's hard to summarize this book, because it's so much about the plot and secrets and back and forth. I will say that if what you've been longing for is dramatic action sequences, fight scenes, and the final revelation of everyone's machinations, this is the perfect book for you. If not, it's still a good resolution to the series. (Plus, I so want the sequel about Sophronia the adult spy.)
What are you currently reading?
Pyramids by Terry Pratchett. Good lord, I barely remember this book. But at least as of the opening... parts? (well, I can't say 'chapters'), in some ways it's an interesting early version of Small Gods. Which is one of my very favorite Discworld books, so I am down for that.
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Date: 2015-11-12 06:49 pm (UTC)