MixedThe Hindu (IND)Gun Island travels, with characteristic flamboyance, from the Sundarbans to Venice, arches over the past and the present, tangles myth with fact to bring home to readers that the world as we know it is in the grip of unprecedented change and in our wilful ignoring of it possibly lies our end ... Gun Island has bits of everything—magic, myth, history, science, zoology, etymology. It’s about climate change, but suddenly it’s also about migration and trafficking, and with the feeblest linkages. The result is not so much a Persian carpet as a patchwork quilt ... By committing himself so strongly to writing an ‘environmental’ novel, Ghosh has fallen foul ... At every turn, his theme dominates, overriding the storytelling ... Lives and events don’t evolve with inevitability, but are forced forward, obliged to make a point ... Ghosh tries to draw upon the surreal but with characters who are too tepid to pull it off. His bet on the unknown is half-hearted, always hedged by data and factoids ... Ghosh...really needs to brush up his magic spells.
