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50books_poc. Amongst all my other pending reviews/booklogs that are not for Banana Fish are at least three for this community; I am not going to be counting manga (for fairly obvious reasons, such as being past 50 volumes already this year) but hope to use it to catch up on some of my unread books as well as finding new things to read.
In the near future Antar, living alone in a crumbling New York apartment working as a cataloguer for an artifical intelligence network, finds an ID card for a business he used to work for, a card for a co-worker who disappeared in Calcutta in 1995. In that place and time period, Murugan (the co-worker) investigates the medical history of malaria, but he keeps bumping into an odd group of people who seem to know more about his research than he does. In the late 1880s, Elijah Farley, a British missionary with scientific training, visits a malarial research laboratory where the local assistants know far more about the disease than the British overseer…
The story twists between times, places and narrators, and it drew me along with it very successfully; the writing and the pacing all work well, and there are some great moments (I particularly enjoyed Urmila’s attempts to buy fish, which were vivid and frustrating and set up a large cast of distinct characters in a very small space. I had more problems were the overall McGuffin for the story, the Calcutta chromosome itself, and the ending, but I think much of these due to the type of story Ghosh is telling and my expectations about the story I wanted to read.
( Spoilers. )
Despite these comments I enjoyed the book a lot, particularly Ghosh’s skill at creating vivid and believable characters. I think I have The Glass Palace hanging around somewhere, and will probably try that next – The Sea of Poppies, which looks fascinating, appears to be the first in a series, and I’m not sure whether the rest are out yet.
50books_poc. Amongst all my other pending reviews/booklogs that are not for Banana Fish are at least three for this community; I am not going to be counting manga (for fairly obvious reasons, such as being past 50 volumes already this year) but hope to use it to catch up on some of my unread books as well as finding new things to read.In the near future Antar, living alone in a crumbling New York apartment working as a cataloguer for an artifical intelligence network, finds an ID card for a business he used to work for, a card for a co-worker who disappeared in Calcutta in 1995. In that place and time period, Murugan (the co-worker) investigates the medical history of malaria, but he keeps bumping into an odd group of people who seem to know more about his research than he does. In the late 1880s, Elijah Farley, a British missionary with scientific training, visits a malarial research laboratory where the local assistants know far more about the disease than the British overseer…
The story twists between times, places and narrators, and it drew me along with it very successfully; the writing and the pacing all work well, and there are some great moments (I particularly enjoyed Urmila’s attempts to buy fish, which were vivid and frustrating and set up a large cast of distinct characters in a very small space. I had more problems were the overall McGuffin for the story, the Calcutta chromosome itself, and the ending, but I think much of these due to the type of story Ghosh is telling and my expectations about the story I wanted to read.
( Spoilers. )
Despite these comments I enjoyed the book a lot, particularly Ghosh’s skill at creating vivid and believable characters. I think I have The Glass Palace hanging around somewhere, and will probably try that next – The Sea of Poppies, which looks fascinating, appears to be the first in a series, and I’m not sure whether the rest are out yet.
