A review by roohii
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book swallowed me like a tidal wave. The writing is gorgeous, evocative, powerful - and yet, simple. Striking. The sentences resonate like the toll of a heavy bell, each pendulous turn exposing a new sliver of tension and intention in the reader's mind.
Ganeshananthan uses a number of little techniques that she pulls off effortlessly; brief passages where she switches to writing in the second person, and you could swear she had stopped her train of thought to pause and take your hand in hers as she recounts the thrum of loss, urgency, and duty that pounded in her own chest. At other intervals, although the text is written in English, Ganeshananthan invites the reader to savor the phonetic quirks of a particular word in her mother tongue, describing its syllables, the way its familiarity could almost light a match to illuminates an otherwise dark moment.
This is a story about war but it is not about the fighting. It is about the thousand heartbreaks that are accumulated in the tensions leading up to conflict, as well as the fear and uncertainty of the worrying and the waiting, the way it can fracture a family the way even a tiny splinter of a crack can arc like lightning across a glass surface that was once whole but will never be described as such again.
I will recommend this book to everyone I know, and I will read it again and again. It's an absolutely staggering work of insight, humanity, and emotion described so vividly you might swear you had been there yourself.
Ganeshananthan uses a number of little techniques that she pulls off effortlessly; brief passages where she switches to writing in the second person, and you could swear she had stopped her train of thought to pause and take your hand in hers as she recounts the thrum of loss, urgency, and duty that pounded in her own chest. At other intervals, although the text is written in English, Ganeshananthan invites the reader to savor the phonetic quirks of a particular word in her mother tongue, describing its syllables, the way its familiarity could almost light a match to illuminates an otherwise dark moment.
This is a story about war but it is not about the fighting. It is about the thousand heartbreaks that are accumulated in the tensions leading up to conflict, as well as the fear and uncertainty of the worrying and the waiting, the way it can fracture a family the way even a tiny splinter of a crack can arc like lightning across a glass surface that was once whole but will never be described as such again.
I will recommend this book to everyone I know, and I will read it again and again. It's an absolutely staggering work of insight, humanity, and emotion described so vividly you might swear you had been there yourself.