Reviews

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

Only show reviews with written explanations

zdoublea's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

i rlly liked this book! i LOVED the protag and how she was an older woman still figuring things out and i loved that she was messy and unsatisfied! i loved the theming around feminism and language and colonialism and immigration! i liked the relationship between the characters also and how it was a journey through parts of her life as well.

i def feel this book got a jump in my eyes bc im pakistani so when she spoke in urdu or mentioned the culture in pakistan or the culture between the west and pakistan i Felt it.

idk esp when she talked abt how she sometimes felt disconnected from her culture or how she was forgetting urdu even tho it was her mother tongue... like i felt that!

in the end tho i don't think it rlly stuck the landing? like i feel all the juicy ideas they were building up around language rlly fizzled out at the end?

we don't hear abt it after she goes to india at all. i feel like the cannibalism stuff didn't have enough time to breathe. the big idea of the novel kinda shifted just to men in power etc at the end and dropped everything else it was building up.

colleenoakes's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

This book went from brilliant to slow, gorgeous to underwhelming and back again, but ultimately it left me somewhat disappointed. The writing is very literary, and I loved the character (who was self-absorbed to the max, but well-drawn in that and man, I love an anti-hero).

The Centre has a brilliant, disturbing plot at its core, but it takes much too long to get there - the reveal could have come in the middle with a satisfying finale, but instead the reveal came much too late and with too little stakes. The last quarter of the book unfortunately was a whimper. It was pretty disappointing given the draw of the plot. Like the Centre’s wicked garden, I wanted to see what was buried, but we barely scratched the surface.

Also, to have a slow burn sapphic romance between two dynamic characters fizzle into an unequal, strange sexual moment with that characters DAD was such a weird narrative point that didn’t play out in the end and was honestly just gross.

Although the plot and mystery were interesting enough (with many questions left unanswered), where the Centre shines is its discussion of language through the lens of colonialism and privilege. It brought up points about translation that I had never even considered, and found myself eager to learn more about.