A review by _blueberry_pie_
A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee

emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

3.0

I was impressed by the writing style considering that this was Neel Mukherjee's debut novel. Not an author that I was familiar with and I was delighted by his storytelling. He definitely knows how to write! That said, I think he was a little too ambitious with everything he was trying to achieve with this book. There were 4 main areas of focus that I found: Ritwik's past and his life in India as well as him coming to terms with his abuse, Ritwik's identity as a gay man, Ritwik's struggle with being an immigrant and the shady side of being an illegal immigrant, and finally the story that he is working on about Miss Gilby. Neither of these elements have any overlap with each other. Miss Gilby's story not overlapping with Ritwik's life makes sense. I think it would've been less jarring had it just been Ritwik's immigrant story and then the story he is working on. Ritwik dealing with child abuse, for example, is something that is introduced, Ritwik has this big realization that he was abused as a child, and then that is never brought up again. As an immigrant, you would think he would at least think about home, or compare his present to where he came from, considering that that is the only point of reference he has. NOPE! There's none of that either. Now that I think about it, the plot was just messy. The ending was equally unsatisfying. Ritwik's death honestly felt like a cop out. It almost felt as though the author did not know how to end the tale. Sure, there are plenty of books where the main character's death just happens and you wonder what the point of it all was, but even then, it's built up to that. The world is hostile or there is some kind of foreshadowing. There was none of that. He gets killed because of a racist hate crime, and there was no indication that he was ever subjected to that or had seen someone else being subjected to a situation as such. Overall, it was mediocre. I'd be curious to read Neel Mukherjee's other works only because he does write very well, and maybe his future books would be less riddled with plot holes.