Review: Very interesting
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 24, 2013
When I agreed to review this book, I knew it was outside my normal reading list. I've never been to India and don't know all that much about it, and I learned a lot about the society while reading this. From that standpoint alone, it was worthwhile to me but that's not all. As other reviewers have noted, the murder mystery is not the main theme of the book. It happens two-thirds of the way through the story, and the problem for investigators is not finding a suspect but finding too many. The dead man was thoroughly detestable and a lot of people had good reason to hate him.The real theme of the book is the interaction between the characters. To say the least, this is a very dysfunctional family with many hidden secrets and some skeletons in the closet. It's a good story which keeps you interested.The first part of the book has more explanatory narration than I like since I prefer for the background details to be revealed gradually. The later part of the book is much better. As an American, I found the dialog to be excessively formal, but that is a comment rather than a criticism since I really don't know how the characters would speak in real life.Overall, I enjoyed the book which means 4 stars according to Amazon's rating scale.