A review by maketeaa
A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee

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

4.0

following ritwik's story feels a lot like how ritwik follows zafar's story -- deceptively close, close enough to taste the grittiness, to see him at the most intimate of proximities, but with a barrier still up between us, like we truly don't know his motives, and can only glean them through the web of his experiences and the decisions he chooses to make. following the death of his mother, ritwik moves from kolkata to study at oxford university. from the outset, we are introduced to the traumatic abuse he had received from his mother, which further unfolds in detailed, albeit somewhat disconnected, flashbacks of memories and, in a memorably heartbreaking scene, a phone call to the nspcc which leads to nowhere. as he passes his time he writes a story based on tagore's 'ghare baire' from the point of view of miss gilby, whose own narrative reflects ritwik's in the context of being a pariah in a foreign country, and, ultimately, despite how one attempts to assimilate, being at the receiving end of a violent wake up call that they do not belong. what stood out to me most was the self sabotaging tendencies ritwik was stuck in through the book. we see his experiences, yes, but we hardly see the ways these change him -- he is solely reacting to his circumstances, and sometimes we wonder if maybe that is his only choice.

mukherjee has a GREAT writing style. this book was, not gonna lie, a little flat in terms of actual story, but i think the way he weaves together sentences to form scenes really makes it so much better 
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