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A review by colleenoakes
The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
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.
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.