Okay, so this book is sort of a mess. Its main story line follows a New York couple trying to regain intimacy that has been lost under the stress of taking care of a high support needs autistic child, who then lose said child in the desert, but it also follows a ton of people in a sort of cult that believe they can communicate with aliens, an Iraqi immigrant family, and a few other, more brief characters.

I have to say, the style was totally up my alley. I loved the energy, and was drawn closer to the story with every word (which I think was aided by my love for the American Southwest and its mythology and essence), but I also felt sort of lost a lot of the time. I think that Kunzru really didn't want to connect the dots for us-- just lay them out and let us map it all out-- which was interesting, but also left the story feeling really disjointed. I was hoping that the stories would connect in ways that left me having moments of realization or felt like they added something new to the narrative, but it just didn't really.

I wanted more of their ties, and I wanted to really know and understand each character. Sometimes, while reading, I wondered if what he was talking about really mattered at all. It felt a bit like some of the different stories were just trying to be clever. That said, I do think every character on their own was written incredibly. I was especially impressed by Lisa and how well she was made both sympathetic and an incredibly fucked up dickhead. 

Overall, I do have to say I really loved reading this. It was super enjoyable and interesting, and I loved getting lost in the tangled knot of this book, but I also don't think I really got any greater meaning from it. I think I'd need to reread from a more analytical lens, and maybe do some annotating, to get that. I don't think that me not finding it means there wasn't something more there.

Didn’t like the writing style.
Story was disjointed.

Solid until the end. Felt like the ending wasn't fully satisfying