The Gin Drinkers

This book was different to many others I have read, and I would say that it is a great read - depending, of course, on what you are looking for in a book. Ghose creates some interesting characters (who are indeed confused and messed up - but that is always more compelling than sanity, right?). A plot which revolves around contenders for the directorship of the fictious (?) Mahatma Gandhi Foundation; whether Uma, the young Oxford returned graduate will ever get it on with her English'boyfriend' Sam, and the mysterious identity of the thieves who are stealing valuable, old books from the homes of Delhi's elite and powerful. Ghose's is a great wordsmith, and it was her writing style and shrewd observation of character and place that did it for me; her prose conjured images in my mind and she had a way of giving clear shape and form to ideas and concepts that I had only some dim, shady awareness of before. If you have spent time in Delhi, you will enjoy the references to well-known, and less well-known, landmarks and areas. If you havent been, it's a good way to get a glimpse of one perspective on this enthralling city and this particular part of its society. My criticisms would be that sometimes, both in her characterisation and her descriptive work she occasionally goes just one step too far and characters/events become slightly unbelievable, or descriptions seem hyperbolic or somewhat forced. I wasn't sure whether it was because I am not Indian and have comparatively little understanding of the society she was depicting (I am an English woman, who has been living in India and Delhi) and so therefore I wasnt fully getting what she was trying to achieve? I also think, like many good books, it slightly dwindles off at the end - as if it can't quite sustain the narrative and has to resort to somewhat of a cliche (but then I think the poor old cliche is sometimes unfairly derided - cliches were invented for a reason, a way of making sense of life perhaps?). Ultimately, I was captivated by this book and read it cover to cover in a couple of days, (glass of gin and tonic in hand).