The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri

[anitabuchan.livejournal.com]

I had high hopes for the Age of Shiva. The blurb sounded good, the cover was gorgeous, and it had received a string of glowing reviews for various newspapers and authors. In the end, I was left wondering whether I'd read the same book as everyone else.

The problems started on the very first page, which featured a highly sexualised description of breastfeeding - I now wish I'd read the first few pages before buying it, as a graphic description of a mother teasing her baby with her nipple would have made me put it straight back. Meera, the main character, I found completely unlikable. She seemed to exist purely in relation to the people around her, mostly men. Her strongest feelings with concentrated on her son and husband. Some of her actions made no sense and seemed to have no motivation behind them - unless her intention was to cause herself as many problems as possible. She then went on to blame others for her situation, despite her various chances to say no or create a better life for herself. I can accept characters that make bad choices, but for much of the book I just couldn't understand what caused her to act the way she did. If she did have a motivation, it was generally competition with/jealousy of another person. And then, of course, there was her deeply disturbing relationship with her son.

It's a shame, because I wanted to like this. I loved some of the descriptive passages, although there were a few too many of them! It didn't take long before I was starting to skim. Some of the secondary charaters had real potential. I felt sorry for Meera's father, an athiest who wanted to see his daughters educated and living with husbands who treated them with respect. I can completely understand his disappointment and frustration with Meera. The ending was, I think, left a little ambiguous, which I liked (although, still hating her motivations for her possible actions).

Like I said, this has received glowing reviews from various major papers. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has read this? I hardly ever feel this negatively about a book, and I honestly feel bad I can't like it better. So if anyone has got some positive comments on this, please tell me!

Comments

[sophinisba]

I read Suri's first novel, The Death of Vishnu, when it came out some years ago and I enjoyed it a lot, so I was interested to see that he had a new book out, but looking at the reviews on Amazon I saw that a lot of them were mixed or negative, and that included reviews from a lot of people who had liked his first book and were disappointed by the second. A lot of other people found Meera unsympathetic and felt that the story dragged. :/

[anitabuchan.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one! I have heard good things about The Death of Vishnu, so I think I might check to see if my library has it. But I'm cautious about buying a copy after The Age of Shiva.

[nzraya.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that it is actually very refreshing to read a negative review on this comm! I was beginning to despair about my ever-lengthening "to read" list....

[nzraya.livejournal.com]

Ah. Interesting pronoun. Because the description of the breastfeeding passage did make me wonder a bit. Nothing like a heroine (whose sex and/or sexuality are important to the story) being ventriloquized by a male author to put me off my cornflakes.