Reviews tagging 'Incest'

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee

2 reviews

maketeaa's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

this was, at times, extremely difficult to read. i found myself skipping lines that were too visceral, too gruesome to look at head-on, which is interesting to have experienced in a story whose main actors are a middle class bengali family and the complex dynamics between them. the lives of an others is, in a complicated, tangled way, about exactly what it says on the tin -- the way our lives interact with the lives of others, the way they are constantly spurned, evaluated, compared with the lives of others, but most importantly, how every impression that the lives of others truly matter to us is an illusion for the truth: that, at the end of the day, the lives of others we give importance to only matter insofar they revolve around our own. we see characters such as chhaya, who clings possessively to her older brother as a source of ownership, of a sense of belonging disguised as love, and how her snide remarks and manipulative behaviour are crafted to keep her at the centre of power in her own consciousness. we see charubala, the mother in law of the house, who carefully maintains outward appearances of the ghosh family and sweeps under the rug all that could malign them. and, separated from the main household, we see supratik, a revolutionary, committing terrorist attacks against his class enemies and opposing the middle-class culture he had come from. but the bleak ending serves to show that underlying such attachments to the lives of others, whether good or bad, is the desire to affirm our own, and that loyalty, to ideologies or people alike, only sustain as long as they serve our own deep rooted interests. 
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helie's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective

4.0

It took me fully 2 months to read this book. The cast of characters was large, and it took a long time to work my way through some of the longer and more wandering descriptions. 

I picked this up because I enjoyed the author's State of Freedom. While I think State of Freedom is probably the better book, this one spoke to me much more. Partially it was the family drama that felt more relatable. While there certainly was violence in this one (the book literally begins with a man self-immolating after killing his family in desperation), it didn't feel as intense as State of Freedom. 

I found the pace slow and frustrating at times. The author kept dangling tantalizing plot details before switching over to a different POV or timeline. And I had a lot of trouble keeping the cast of characters together, since we were introduced to them piecemeal. I do wish some of the storylines had wrapped up a bit more. 

Overall, I enjoy Mukherjee's works in their focus on the communist movement, classism and casteism in Indian society, and unflinching (though sometimes alarming) portrayals of life. 
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