Sacred Games: A Novel (P.S.) by Vikram Chandra
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Book Reviews of Sacred Games: A Novel (P.S.)
Book Review: Enjoyed it thoroughly
Summary: 4 Stars
Gritty, well-written, layered novel. Characters are well-developed, plot works.. As an Indian who's been and lived in many parts of India, but not Bombay, Bombay comes across as both familiar, and somewhat different from the rest of the country...Book Review: Fun read
Summary: 4 Stars
I can never get enough of Mumbai and the underworld. This satiates on both fronts.Book Review: Garbled Games
Summary: 3 Stars
As an American who enjoys Bollywood movies, and who is studying Hindi as a hobby, I delved enthusiastically into this book. I am a relative initiate into Indian culture who has never been to India, so the book did indeed have some exotic charm. Even for me however, the overwhelming amount of Hindi in the book (*most* of which is *not* in the glossary) was very distracting. Some of the writing is beautiful and startling, but, as has been noted, it is very uneven.
My main problems with this book are as follows. Editing might have helped.
1) The plot is too rambling and disjointed. The insets are interesting on their own but do not significantly contribute to an understanding of the characters. The resolution of the various plotlines is anticlimactic.
2) The characters are uneven too. Gaitonde (the gangster) is probably the best drawn, the Guru the least. I liked Sartaj and believed most of the characters, but something left me very empty at the end. That emptiness is my most lasting impression. For all the lush action and intrigue, there is something ultimately cynical and purposeless in this book's tone.
What I liked best were the stories within stories. As a group they don't have a lot of cohesion though. The Canterbury Tales this ain't.
I heard Vikram Chandra talk about this book and he spoke mostly about the inspiration of following Bombay gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim. When I approached him and asked about the overwhelming amount of foreign language in the book, he said that it was Hindi (and not Marathi) and that whatever I couldn't find in the back of the book could be found on his website's online glossary. I enjoyed parts of the experience of reading this book, but I don't think I'll be reading any more of Chandra's books soon.
Book Review: Trying too hard to be Salman Rushdie
Summary: 3 Stars
About a 100 pages into the book, I had the disturbing feeling that Vikram Chandra sounded like someone who I had read before. It soon dawned on me ... this book sounded like The Satanic Verses in some parts, and even the name of the book somewhat hinted at the same theme. The difference is that Salman Rushdie is who he is without any imitation; Vikram Chandra can only capture about half His Master's Voice.
For all that, it's not a bad read, just an awfully long one. At least 300 pages are completely pointless. The book is principally about Mumbai and an immense cast of characters who manage to live and thrive (only God knows how!) within it. And yet, Chandra wants to venture out of Mumbai, doing so in long, baffling excursions to pre-Partition Pakistan and Naxalite-infested Bihar - both are places with incredible stories to tell, but are completely un-needed in a work that has gives the reader enough to grapple with just with its core subject.
The parts about Mumbai are fabulous. I hope those parts are accurate (I am not a Mumbaikar). There's no question that Chandra loves his subject, and there is much to love and be impressed by in his Mumbai, corrupt and gang-ridden as it is, and yet vibrant and cosmopolitan. It's when the book tries to get beyond Bombay to the rest of India that it seems a bit contrived, with pointless mini-books being created within the overall edifice that do not really support the main structure.
The story, so long as it stays within Mumbai, flows beautifully and is a great read. A really good director (a la Scorsese) should pick this up and turn it into a movie ("Gangs of Mumbai").
Ramdas
Book Review: A good read
Summary: 3 Stars
Being in the habit of reading books literally from cover to cover, including the recommendations, I find that Sacred Games does not live up to the exuberant praise lavished on it by its literary critics. Vikram Chandra certainly has the gift of storytelling, and his interweaving of different storylines that seem unconnected at first but then come together in odd places and moments is very skillfully done. The plot is captivating enough to make one wish to read on an on to see the story unfold (though the end is a little disappointing), and therefore the novel's 936 pages don't make it too long. Yet, much as I admire Indian novelists writing about life in what is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating places in the world, I don't consider this novel about criminals, actresses, policemen and gurus in Mumbai a literary work on the level of, for example, Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy.
One of the main reasons is that the novel fails (in me, at least) to stir up emotions, as an outstanding novel should (and Seth's did). Also, Sacred Games contains, apart from a lot of swearing and street slang that doesn't elevate the text, an overly generous sprinkling of words and phrases in Hindi, as well as numerous references to things cultural - expressions, places, people, songs, movies etc. - that are only understandable to Indians, so that non-Indian readers can't help but miss out on these bits and pieces. Clearly this book, though written in English, is meant for an Indian and not a foreign readership. Too bad. These flaws notwithstanding, Sacred Games is a good read if you like crime novels, but not one that should be extolled as a great literary work.