A review by megancmahon
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Spoilers!

I did it. I finished it. The beast is done. 

In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

  • I actually didn't mind the purple prose, because at the end of the day, I'm a purple prose girlie. Sometimes it got to be a little much, but I found that wasn't one of the problems I had with the book
    • Sometimes it did try WAY too hard to be profound. "Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, inevitably, kills the other." Uhm. I don't think pride can lift an individual out of poverty. That's not how it works, Linbaba
  • How...does he not know that Karla is shady and involved with Sapna? I get that he's a man desperately seeking love and acceptance so maybe he doesn't WANT to see it, but bruh. He never even ASKS her what she does for work, when it's obviously not something aboveboard and legal??
    • He picks the WORST times to declare his love for people. He and Karla are watching THEIR FRIEND'S HOMES BE DESTROYED and he thinks "you know what, this would be the perfect time to plant a kiss on Karla. The mood's just right." We find out later, though, that she's reflecting on a murder during this time, so maybe he read her right
    • "Our tongues writhed and slithered in their caves of pleasure" yikes
  • There was a LOT, especially in the slum, of "these people were so happy and smiley despite their situation and they never bickered and everyone did their chores." The one dimensional viewpoint made me a little uncomfortable; please let your people be people and not just lessons for the main character
  • Lin was kind of insufferable. There will be multiple sub-points to this
    • when he says "other junkies called me Doc because I pulled them out of overdoses" all I could think of was when Andy Bernard said "Oh I got straight As, they called me Ace." It seems that instead of developing a steady backstory for his character Roberts made up whatever would make Lin seem the most relatable and Jesus-like in the moment
    • MAJOR Jesus-complex going on here. Yikes.
    • He talks a lot about how he became a revolutionary, but not for the cause he fought for. Likely because there wasn't one. When he describes what he ACTUALLY did - which was make bombs - it's not at all surprising that he lost custody of his daughter, although the actual reasons are occluded
    • He seems to think he's Jesus, but he also joins organized crime. He says he wants to do good and BE good and open a free clinic in the slums of Bombay and then joins the mafia and sells passports to a man who defrauded a CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. But it's okay though, Lin isn't like the other gangsters. He does everything they do, but with tears in his eyes for the fallen state of humanity
  • MY BIGGEST GRIPE. Dude sexualizes EVERY WOMAN HE MEETS. Doesn't matter how purple the prose is when you do it, buddy, if we know the breast size of every woman you meet over the course of a thousand-page novel I am GOING to call you out on it. And this was really a shame because a lot of the female characters had huge potential to be interesting. Not Karla lol but Lisa Carter was awesome, and Kavita!! Honestly I wanted this whole book to be about Kavita
  • The passages about falling into heroin addiction, and getting clean, were actually very beautiful and interesting
  • The city of Bombay is a character here, and one I loved. Despite my gripes with this novel the environment of Bombay is lovingly described and it really makes me want to go visit
  • I was also VERY uncomfortable with the way he described a lot of the Indian characters, though. It felt very colonial and white-man-travelling
  • Oof. The conclusion of his relationship with Khaderbai was a big yikes. I loved it, though, it was almost Shakespearean in its denouement
  • PRABAKER. NOOOOOO
  • I liked Abdullah and Khaled, and I was so happy that they didn't, in fact, die!! Especially Khaled, he deserved some happiness. I was confused that Lin was like "oh Abdullah is a killer" bruh you say you've never killed someone but you're like Toph in Avatar: SOME of the people you've thrown around and beat up are almost certainly deceased.
  • THE BEAR. The bear was my favourite part of this whole book. When they tried to dress him up I positively HOWLED. 
  • I loved the ending. I thought that while he tried too hard to be profound in other parts of the book, the ending actually WAS profound

Hoo boy. Anyway. Eat Pray Love for men?