Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Shantaram: A Novel
Book Review: "Too many notes"
Summary: 1 Stars
Diary of what became a very reluctant reader
Day 1. Okay, let's make some time and do this thing. Two years ago a friend gave me a copy. She was lyrical about it. Couldn't tell me why, and answered my questions only with a "You just have to read it... I can't spoil the plot now, can I?" The close to a thousand pages kept me far from ever picking it up. But now I feel ready. Let's do this thing.
Day 2. Am close to page 100 now, and I'm not sure why so many people praise this book as enthusiastically as they do... I find his style of writing utter boring, with the Usual Suspects filling the pages: expats somewhere in a tropical city, frequenting a lousy watering hole, being involved with sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. Gosh, how extremely un-original can one be...?
Another thing that's really bothering me, is the excessive amounts of useless blabber. Could the editors not have taken out their red pens and do what they're supposed to do: take out all dead wood? Maybe it'll come to me, later on. Let's give the next 100 pages a try. Only 800 to go till the end.
Day 7. I've started reading diagonally. The man needs way too many words to tell a story. And it's sooooo badly written too... Sad! Will I give up, or shall I give it another try? Okay, to the author's credit: I have actually earmarked a page because I liked some of his sentences. A meager harvest, after close to 200 pages. Most authors are winding up their storylines now, heading for some kind of mesmerising finale. This man is still picking up pace; going nowhere in particular - apart from another deep dive into his memory, regurgitating conversations he once had that, for any other author, should not have made it into a book. And I honestly don't see him get anywhere close to my heart...
Okay, to the author's credit, I did like this part: "...some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you."
Day 10. Finished the first part. Only 780 pages to go.
It's a very long time ago that it took me this long to read a book.
Why on earth did my friend like it so much?
Day 15. Drastic measures are required. I'm upping the pace of my speed reading. Page 286.
Day 18. That is it. I've given it another 100 pages and have gone beyond the magical 1/3 limit. This clearly isn't working. For the first time in a very, very, very long time I decide to put the book back on the shelves. Unfinished.
It reminds me of this scene in the movie Amadeus, about Mozart. The composer plays a piece for the emperor who can't get too excited and, based on the words of his adviser, says, "Too many notes..." The barbarian! How dare he?
But its exactly what I feel about Shantaram.
A quick calculation tells me the book contains about 300,000 words.
Even half of that would have been on the rich side.
No.
Not for me.
Book Review: 19 out of 42
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a wonderful story for the first nineteen chapters; after that it changes and it's not nearly as good. The "change" is sudden and unexpected. You will enjoy the first nineteen chapters, the first 400 pages of this 900 page book, and you won't take my advice to stop reading at that point, as I was advised to do. You will read on, as I did, expecting the magic and charm to return, and even when they don't you'll want to tie up all those loose strings.
The first nineteen chapters are a book about India. We read this for my book club, and we were fortunate to have a guest who had grown up in India, to answer our questions about all the strange and fantastic things this white, Australian, ex-con author was telling us. It turns out that what he wrote about Indian ways and culture is true, and our guest even demonstrated the Indian head waggle!
This story offers more than an intimate glimpse at India; it is also a provocative lesson on redemption for all sins, not just the ones that can land you in a jail. It also offers a few lessons on love.
But after chapter nineteen the story is no longer really about India, and the main character, Lin, is no longer a "normal" man in extraordinary circumstances. Lin becomes a kind of superman involved in one cliff-hanging circumstance after another. The story and the characters are no longer endearing; they become larger-than-life cardboard "heroes" in an action movie. The reader no longer learns anything of value about India or the characters. And that's too bad, because it didn't have to go that way; there was enough going in the first 400 pages to carry it every bit as well to 900.
I will mention, too, that Gregory Roberts could write a compelling story about being in prison, if Australian prisons really are as bad as he claims. Perhaps he will.
Book Review: 5 stars for the story; 3 for the grammar
Summary: 4 Stars
Well, I'm only about a third of the way through this book, but, so far, I am finding it equally fascinating, and annoying. Fascinating, because of the author's meticulous attention to detail, in his every description of life in Bombay, and its people; and annoying, because the author uses way, way, WAY too many commas, and it's an irritating distraction, that his editors are to blame for not having corrected. Don't you agree? I admit that this quasi-review is a bit flip, but for those grammarians out there, please be warned that the extreme overuse of punctuation nearly outweighs one's enjoyment of the story itself and the pleasure of learning about India. Enough said!Book Review: A Big Juicy Ride of a Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
What a delight. I have been away from novels for some time absorbed in nonfiction interests. Reading it has been like a thrill ride that illuminates new perspectives. Shantaram has given my private moments the multi-faceted tastes, smells, and complexities of India and lifestyles that were new to me. I hope many others enjoy this book as much as I have.Book Review: A Bollywood biography
Summary: 3 Stars
While reading 'Shantaram' I thought that it was supposed to be a truthful memoir of Gregory David Roberts' experiences as an exile in India (this belief was encouraged by the bio on the back of the book). As such, I was amazed at the variety and intensity of the events, and the incredible characters. While it may describe incredible things, there is no inherent impossibility that these things might have happened to someone once. However, Wikipedia tells me that the story is largely fictional, so that changes my opinion a lot. As a memoir, it reads as a kind of 'bollywoodisation' of real life, as Roberts elevates the style of prose and description so far into the stratosphere of melodrama that it disappears from view. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be happening in the romantic scenes, they disappeared into a thick jungle of metaphor and never reappeared. But as a tale spun out of a few real events, it makes more sense but is less compelling. It is like a (slightly) more realistic and self-indulgent Wilbur Smith.
'Linbaba' is the nickname given to the protagonist, a convict on the run who stops in Bombay and is enthralled by its complex and exotic life. He gets involved in the local criminal underworld, spends time living in a slum as a doctor, is thrown into a wretched Bombay prison, takes part in an expedition into Afghanistan to deliver weapons to rebels fighting the Russians, and finds the time to have a complicated romance with a mysterious woman. When I write it like that, it is more difficult to see why I thought it was factual. Though I did have my doubts when Linbaba engages in a knifefight with identical twin eunuchs who work for a deranged Russian madam.
This is a very readable book, and the 800 pages or so fly by very quickly. Roberts is a bit addicted to the narrative device of saying 'if I had realised _____ at the time, maybe everything would have been different', but it keeps you wondering what will happen next. There is a great deal of homespun philosophy that is every bit as compelling as you expect the philosophy in what is essentially a romance novel to be. At one point one of the characters proposes that the world is run by one million powerful and wealthy men, ten million men who fight for and protect them, and one hundred million bureaucrats who administer the system. The rest of us just do as we are told. Linbaba, with his desperation, need for affirmation, and rampant narcissism, is a fine picture of why a man becomes one of the 'ten million'.
This review was written in blood, the prison guards viciously beating me every day until I decided to stop writing it. But I never gave up, because I knew that the woman who loved me was waiting to dissolve the lozenge of our hearts in the fire of our passion. I look into her eyes and we tell each other a million stories, dying and rising again through ages of ages. Maybe that is why fate chooses men like me to be her plaything, because if you live like a shadow, you will die alone like a shadow, in the heart of the volcano that is Bombay.