metalphoenix's reviews
730 reviews

The core of this memoir is devastating, and while not fully relatable, very recognizable to me as the child of Indian immigrants. My only flaw of the book is that the telling of her story past college is very unclear. There is a rapid back and forth of the family not speaking to each other and then reconciliation, of quick visits between years of not seeing each other, of huge life events occurring in the matter of sentences. I suppose that’s telling a story of its own, with the author herself feeling the whiplash of her family’s mercurial moods, but as a reader I struggled understanding how the timelines of events occurred, and it almost diminished the impact of the trauma because it happened so rapidly on the page. 

This book started off strong and ended brilliantly; the middle bits were tough for me. Boyne is really funny, but in the same exact way for almost 600 pages. Novel and shocking at first, then kind of tiring. When there isn’t much character development or resolution during that middle part, the humor doesn’t add anything. But as he began wrapping the book up (last couple hundred pages), there was a wonderful mix of beautiful, moving story and wry humor. I would recommend to a very particular kind of reader!