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The Story Of My Assassins (2009)

by Tarun J. Tejpal(Favorite Author)

3.41 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

8172237995 (ISBN13: 9788172237998)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

HarperCollins

review 1: This book made me guffaw at its ridiculous characters, and then it made me depressed about the state of the world, and then it made me annoyed, because the story moved away from the truly sympathetic assassin characters to focus instead on the tedium of the narrator's life. I suspect there is probably a modernist scheme that dictates this, but I'm not sure I should look on the verbatim repetitiveness of this book's prose, especially the parts in the narrator's world, as examples of art rather than examples of bad editing, or bad aesthetics. The narrator's sexual escapades are repetitive and dull. Many characters are reduced to a single repeating image. Yet there are images and phrases in this book which return to me unbidden. Often they are images that appeared just once a... morend drifted away. Some of the utterances of the narrator's guru and the one assassin's guru are surprisingly moving. This is not a perfect book, but in the last few days I have found it difficult to put down. Sometimes I think its particular meditation on dharma and karma in the north Indian underworld is even profound.
review 2: This book was difficult for me to rate. It's well-written, but I did not like it. Like Dickens, Tejpal brings to life a wealth of interesting characters and exposes the dark side of Indian culture, politics, and institutions. But the contempt of the author for all of his characters, and his deep cynicism also come through. One reviewer calls his writing "humane." I don't see this at all. It is not just that the main character is really unlikeable--sexist, amoral, materialistic, uncaring. It is the dispassionate detached way in which the author describes all of the characters. You certainly do gain an understanding of why and how the assassins became who they are. But it is difficult to emotionally identify with any of the characters. There's a lot of sex and violence in the book, and he uses sexual language to describe violence. I found it fairly repulsive. Nonetheless, this author is calling attention to things that need to change. I'm rating this book fairly highly because I think this is a thought provoking book worth discussing and debating. less

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