This is one of the trickiest books to review because it is good and bad at the same time; likeable and non-likeable at the same time. Fans of Roy should expect a novel that is so unlike its predecessor.
The writing is beautiful, (more grim and dingy compared to The God of Small things) and Roy has managed to fit in almost all the problems of India, both political and social. The plot is weak, characters lack depth and the book could have been easily shorter. But on the other hand the book gives a quick glimpse at everything around the present India. This is something I really enjoyed because the incidents in the novel are happening RIGHT NOW and the reader can relate to almost all of them. This makes the book a profound read inspite of many drifting ends. Also, this is a book that will grow on you after you finish it
Read the complete review to decide if the book would suit you - http://www.thebooksatchel.com/ministr... Paperback When the harp begins to sing and the guitar begins to harp, things change dramatically! That is why the book by A Roy has become a dramatic monologue of the ideas and innuendos that she often offers off the books. Reference to the past events are always the best way to write a novel; however, a subtle mechanism behind recalling the events of the past and making them sound like one wants to does call for a scrutiny! Roy's thoughts against the Indian state are well-known. Nevertheless, one (a reader of fiction, including myself) could not expect her doing the same in her fiction too. All the things, except the heart-rendering protagonist and her/his plight to a genuine level, seem genuinely verbose and breast-beating against a certain line of idea. The people who like this are the supposed audience and those who don't like it are the real protagonist of the novel. This was not expected of her. I could do best by rating this novel one but did not do because I respect the 'author of fiction'! And technically, the novel is too lengthy for the theme she has chosen; she could do the same peddling even in a 200-paged book! Paperback 464 pages of utter garbage (organic as well as inorganic) against the Indian state as well as the popular belief, this is what the book offers you. Unless you are an ardent follower of the ideas that Arundhati Roy usually offers as a perfect example of hired gun by the people with vested interest, there is nothing in this book for you. So, don't be a reader like many including me who have wasted our money and time reading this unworthy material. You can read more about this book on the link below:
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness Review Paperback [Originally appeared here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/li...]
How does a lament sound? Like a distorted sonorous wave? Hitting the crest with a shrill cry and falling to quietude with mangled whimpers? Or like a prolonged stream of soiled garble, comprehensible only to its beholder?
I don't know on which note of the spectrum this book might fit in, but I do know that this book is a lament - lament on the daily struggles for (dignified) survival borne by the scarred populace of war-torn Kashmir, which unfortunately I can't talk of in past tense, and the marginalized of the society (taking the transgender as the pivotal link).
The book, from where I see, is about two characters - A transgender, Anjum and a riot victim, Tilottama. Anjum, born Aftab in Old Delhi but discarded by her family for socially- unacceptable biological makeup, is adopted by a whore-house. She lives a good part of her life here before shifting her residence to a graveyard, courtesy a grave altercation related to adoption and rearing of a girl child. Tilottama, on the other hand, begins as a firebrand member of the youth brigade in a posh South Delhi locality but eventually drifts, amid three of her friends and her own dichotomies, to Kashmir and the city's deep, unknown, frequently fatal, alleys. How life, with her own surprises and shocks, brings the two together rounds up the story.
This book, only second from Roy's stable in the last twenty years, retains the metaphorical music that she used to fair rapture in her first book. The descriptions, spring to life with her subtle touch, and she, almost, looks to have done that effortlessly.
But regardless of what admonition and punishment awaited him, Aftab would return to his post stubbornly, day after day. It was the only place in his world where he felt the air made way for him. When he arrived, it seemed to shift, to slide over, like a school friend making room for him on a classroom bench.Roy's characteristic insight into her world's props and their subtle breaths is amply visible. She weaves intricate patterns, just like the stunning Kashmiri carpets she refers to couple of times, around her characters and one gets to see a motley crew doing their part well. The three friends, all of them men, who walk in and out of Tilo's life, represent the various facets of the societal fabric Roy wishes to highlight - Biplab is a senior officer in Intelligence Bureau, Naga is an incendiary journalist and Musa, an activist or terrorist (depending on the way you would like to see).
She sensed that in some strange tangential way, he needed her shade as much as she needed his. And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.But she gets carried away. She touches upon issues of untouchability and gender divide, fanaticism and terrorism, but they emerge only as matter-of-factly. There are long stretches of pages which are dedicated to the haunting memories of Tilottama, which, at first grab our hearts and hold them in their throes, but soon, they become a necessary vent which loses both on emotional as well as novelty quotient. Anjum, in particular, is crafted with a lot of fragility and I would have loved to read a little more about her but Roy had another strong motive to accommodate. Those who are familiar with her political stances, which she has diligently championed across the various articles, non-fiction works and speeches she has put forward, would detect that a lot in this book comes shrouded in her disdain towards the state machinery and its administrators. Place as she might her contempt amid very many chapters, it comes straight out, and with a vengeance. The military establishments, too, come under attack and she holds very few guns back in lambasting their integrity. While she visibly tones down in the second half through the long monologues emanating from Biplab's hours of prophecy, she doesn't quite miss the diatribe train to dispatch her venom. Perhaps, that's why, even for someone fairly apolitical as I, the work didn't pass by without glaring its political face at close proximity to me.
Those viewing the work from a political prism will mostly react in an emphatic manner - whether in support or opposition will depend on their political inclinations. But those looking from an emotional prism will also not be disappointed - she amalgamates the calm and the turbulent of her world with experienced rendition.
Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. In battle , Musa told Tilo, enemies can't break your spirit, only friends can.The book teeters over its bumpy rides with seething heart and clamped teeth, and comes to a standstill in the culminating chapters where a certain ray of hope and perpetuity leaps into the air. The quietness of the shikara stands in stark contrast to the rippling graveyard that is celebrating a wedding, and one doesn't still know where the lament erupted from and where it died down. Or if it is still wailing.
[Note: Thanks to Netgalley, Arundhati Roy and Penguin Books (UK) for providing me an ARC.]
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Also on my blog. Paperback Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend.
Paperback
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on a journey of many years-the story spooling outwards from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi into the burgeoning new metropolis and beyond, to the Valley of Kashmir and the forests of Central India, where war is peace and peace is war, and where, from time to time, 'normalcy' is declared.
Anjum, who used to be Aftab, unrolls a threadbare carpet in a city graveyard that she calls home. A baby appears quite suddenly on a pavement, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. The enigmatic S. Tilottama is as much of a presence as she is an absence in the lives of the three men who loved her.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once an aching love story and a decisive remonstration. It is told in a whisper, in a shout, through tears and sometimes with a laugh. Its heroes are people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, mended by love-and by hope. For this reason, they are as steely as they are fragile, and they never surrender. This ravishing, magnificent book reinvents what a novel can do and can be. And it demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy's storytelling gifts. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Last year as part of my annual women of color reading challenge, I read international Man Booker award winner The God of Small Things (1999). Full of luscious prose and distinct story telling skills, Arundhati Roy expertly tells her readers a story of life in newly partitioned India. Roy is an author who I would easily race to bring home her new books albeit one issue- following the success of The God of Small Things she did not write another work of fiction. Roy has spent her career as a journalist and award winning non fiction author, until this year, eighteen years later with the publication of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. As the saying goes, some things are worth the wait.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness can best be categorized as contemporary literary fiction containing Roy's prose in many forms including poetry, letters, composition, dialogue, and her expert story telling skills. Her story begins in the graveyard Jannat Guest Home of Anjum, although we do not find out the setting or full cast of characters until much later. Anjum, born Aftab, is a hijra-- one who is neither masculine or feminine. In India it is said that only hijras enjoy true happiness, however; during Anjum's early life this is farthest from the truth. Shunned by all factions of society for being neither a boy or girl, eventually the newly female Anjum moves into a Khwabgah, a group home for hijras. The group develops a unique comradeship and it is amongst these people that Anjum lives for the rest of her life, either in the Khwabgah or guest house, which she builds for herself later on.
The first third of the novel is Anjum's story with a large cast of characters, each with a distinctive personality and story to tell. I was captivated by this tale and would have been satisfied if the entire novel was about her and later her desire to be a mother; however, the second third of the novel takes on an entirely new twist. Roy regales her readers with the ongoing conflict in Kashmir. She briefly touches on this when a group at the Khwabgah watches the 9-11 terrorist attacks unfold on television. The hijras are unfazed by events taking place on the other side of the world, but various Muslim and Sikh cells have been plotting secessionist movements in Kashmir since the 1980s.
Roy develops an entirely new plot with protagonists Tilo, Musa, Naga, and Garson Hobart, who met at university; as well as sinister antagonist Commander Amrik Singh. Each comes from a distinct caste and are the unlikeliest of companions, yet a theater class brought them together, and they remain connected for the duration of their lives. The four play key roles in the free Kashmir movement, a life of terrorism, violence, human rights abuses, and too many funerals. A low point of the novel occurs with the story of the murder of Musa's three year old daughter, Miss Jebeen and his wife Arifa, one that tugged on both my and Tilo's heartstrings as Musa recounted it to her. He relates the line that stays with me the most, that in India, only the dead are living, and only the living are dead. To Musa, the murder was an inevitable part of war, yet, to Tilo, an event that sparked her maternal instinct to be a mother.
The two plot lines converge as both Tilo and Anjum desire to save an unclaimed newborn baby in Delhi proper. Each woman would love to raise this child in a life free of the conflicts plaguing India, that unfortunately continue until this day. Ironically, this utmost happiness occurs in Anjum's communal Jannat Guest House in a graveyard, where a community of outcasts band together in harmony, and to raise an otherwise unwanted child. Throughout all of her storytelling, Roy deftly employs various forms of writing techniques to paint a picture of hope in India, one that had me mesmerized from her beginning words until the ending chords. I grew attached to Anjum, only to feel for Tilo, and then the story continues to begin anew.
I would not be surprised if one day Arundhati Roy won the Nobel Prize for her life body of literary work. Her two novels are that powerful and each tell a captivating story of a distinct era in Indian history. While The Ministry of Utmost Happiness can be disjointed at times as one navigates through multiple plots and an extended cast of characters, the writing is excellent and holds attention throughout. Anjum, Tilo, and company are characters that I will remember for a long time. Hopefully we will not have to wait a full eighteen years for Roy's next work, but in the meantime, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a scintillating 4.5 stars. Paperback I, like many people, have heard of the success of Roy's The God of Small Things from twenty years ago. It's been on my mental longlist of books to read since before Goodreads existed. Perhaps it was a mistake to put it off and opt for Roy's newer release instead, but all I can say is my expectations have significantly lowered after reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
At first, I thought the story was slow, dense and hard to follow. It took me a couple hundred pages of squinting hard to see the truth: there is no story.
These kind of books have a special place in the heart of a certain type of reader. A reader who puts beautiful, complex writing over plot and emotional pull; a reader who doesn't mind looking back over almost 500 pages and realizing very little has happened, even if it was told with pretty language.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness essentially follows two main characters in South Asia - Tilo and Anjum - the former is dragged into the center of an independence movement, while the latter is intersex and living among ghosts. However, there is a confusing mess of characters introduced throughout the book and I found it hard to warm to anyone. It is set across the span of many years, through the partition of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but these times of tremendous upheaval and horror were narrated coldly.
The book is just very difficult to enjoy. It feels deliberately intellectual and lacking in personality. Not only is there a sea of forgettable characters, but the book zips quickly between past and present, third and first person, with almost no dialogue to separate the huge paragraphs of dense description. The book constantly has a foot in several tangents about spiritual anecdotes, diatribes, history lessons and various monologues, each of which went on far too long. When it finally came back to the main issues, it took me a while to get back on track.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a book without a plot that simply explores the perspectives, past and present, of many characters. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's also not the kind of book I enjoy reading. It even feels disjointed, almost like a collection of short stories rather than a novel. I feel like The God of Small Things is going to be on my TBR a lot longer.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube Paperback This is a novel that captures the life that Arundhati Roy has lived and the issues that have consumed her since the publication of her groundbreaking The God of Small Things. It is a story about our contemporary world, of India, and Pakistan, delivered through the microcosm of individuals living through the never ending and harrowing conflict in Kashmir, and the fringe communities of outsiders in Delhi. It begins with the observation of vultures being eliminated through poison, a metaphor for the way Indian society has been poisoned by a history of corrupt and venal politicians, religious hatreds, and the overflowing rivers of blood and death denied justice. It touches on the issues of caste, divisions based on country, gender and religion, grief, loss, and love. It is a sprawling tale which lacks the steering hand of a plot, so might not suit those looking for a more defined and structured read. I found it a riveting read, infused with humour amidst the horror, and beautifully written with vibrant imagery, underpinned with artistic, lyrical prose.
In Delhi, a mother examines her new born boy, Aftab, only to find the disturbing anatomical female parts. The lonely Aftab grows up to haunt the Hijras, at the transgender centre, convinced that it is more home than his parental home or the rest of society where he cannot be himself. He is taken in and becomes the wildly popular Anjum, who takes in and raises a child, Zainab. We then get to know Tilo, in Kashmir, part of the youth brigades and her friends, a highly placed disenchanted intelligence officer, a journalist and Musa, an activist in the struggle. We see a region mired in infinite death without end. When asked to help Musa, Garson Hobard does so. Trauma causes Anjum to move to a family graveyard and build a home on top of it. It comes to be known as The Jannet Guesthouse, a sanctuary for outsiders and the misfits where no-one is turned away. It is a swirling hotbed for stories as a community springs up, supporting each other and bringing up a baby without the need for blood ties or religious divisions. This Ministry of Utmost Happiness, built on a graveyard, inhabited by minorities and outsiders, is the symbol for hope, peace and compassion amidst war torn Kashmir and for India.
For those who hold opposing political viewpoints to the author, they are unlikely to be enamoured by this book. For me, it has some deep flaws such as the vast array of characters that it is difficult to do justice to. However, its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. I found it a heartbreaking read when it comes to looking at the history and the current state of India, it is difficult to be optimistic about the future. Amidst the carnage, Roy paints a picture of hope and love through her eccentrics and misfits for whom India offers no home. Who would stand in the way of this literary vision? A stunning and brilliant read that I recommend highly. Thanks to Penguin for an ARC. Paperback Inner dialogue while reading The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness:
This is fun
Oh this is sad
This is boring
This is boring
Who is this?
Skip ahead to the part about the interesting character
Shit now I don't know who they're talking about
Go back
This is boring
Skip ahead again
Skim
Skim
Skim
Only 48% through?!
It's a Man Booker keep going
Sigh
These judges always do this to me
Finish reading in my car
It's hot
I'm done
Next... Paperback 2017 Award for the Read I was Most Afraid to Dislike
I can't go on. I have spent hours getting to 50 percent. I can't do it.
This book is draining me despite a few passages of immense brilliance.
My Infinite Jest of 2017 and because I can't finish it...likely my worst read.
A new title for me is :
The Ministry of Utmost Frustration !! Paperback
