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Title: A pretentious, disconnected attempt at an intellectual novel
Review: The British have a long history of writing atrocious books about India, but this one wins the prize as the worst book in 150 or so years of literary attempts by British writers to capture India. The book is confusing. It is boring. It is pretentious. It is condescending. Anyone wanting a literary picture of Bombay should turn to Anita Desai's BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY, or Rohinton Mistry's A FINE BALANCE, or even John Irving's SON OF THE CIRCUS. And some Brit reviewer had the audacity to compare this miserable writer to John Irving! The tough girl voice is irritating, and the central character so distasteful that one wishes she had been done in during one of the tiresome attempts on her life. I kept on reading because I wanted to see how bad the novel would get. At the end I was so confused that I didn't know who was guilty, except the writer for writing such pure trash.
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