RaveBookforumA rangy and roving novel of multiple, often oppositional voices, Ministry provides us with an intimate picture of a diverse cast of characters: some with homes and privileged lives and others without; some who feel that they belong to a nation and others fighting to create a new one ... The book’s narrator, who frequently stops to offer fierce commentary on all aspects of Indian culture, reveals that Roy’s instinct for satire is as sharp as ever, and her stories about Anjum and her cohort build into a broader portrait of the country over the past few decades ... Her prose is in this sense radically democratic. And her unmistakable style and her way of seeing the world become something larger, too: a narrative glue holding together a novel that is made up of disjointed parts.
Mohsin Hamid
MixedBookforumExit West might bring to mind Donald Trump's loud claim, during the campaign, that he wanted to ban Muslims from coming to America. But Hamid, once again, approaches this topic from the viewpoint of the Other: Reading him, you identify with the struggles and sorrows of the migrants; you understand, at least a little bit, the conditions that refugees are trying to escape. Most powerfully, we are encouraged to imagine the characters' painful choices—why they might subject their families to incredibly risky boat voyages, and why they might leave other family members behind to die ... It is thrilling to read fiction that provides a report on the world and on how people live today. Hamid is often good at delivering this pleasure. But in Exit West, somewhat inexplicably, he adopts a narrative voice that I can only call biblical...Hamid is usually a wonderful stylist, but this is mannered and jarring, and the awkward syntax and style are deployed repeatedly in Exit West ... We are inhabiting a dystopia that seemsfamiliar, and yet can be located only in the future. We see things that are set at a distance. This narrative distance, as well as the rhythm of the language, gives the rest of the novel the feel of a fable. The excitement in the opening pages of the novel wears off. And yet, such is the intelligence of Hamid's craft that he is able to offer many small, engaging essays, even amid a faltering plot.
Yaa Gyasi
PositiveBookforumHomegoing’s structure—with chapters alternating between Africa and America—serves the narrative well. We are reminded of the recent past from which these slaves have been torn, and are always aware of the unforgiving violence of the rupture ... Homegoing’s imaginative breadth lies in dreaming up a lineage, a continuous history of family, for those who would otherwise be dust ... The novel succeeds when it retrieves individual lives from the oblivion mandated by racism and spins the story of the family’s struggle to survive.
