Review:
Unsettling, Often claustrophobic!This novel looks intimately at a middle-class family living in Bengaluru, at how their new-found fortune becomes more of a cruel joke played upon them, unleashing the beast within. It changes family equations, robs them of their moral fortitude and peace of mind.
The author often refers some minute details that are easy to relate to any middle-class south Indian
which may be nostalgic at times and Déjà vu the other times but you will never want to go through where the story later progresses and ends.
Quotes From The Book:
“it’s not we who control money, it’s the money that controls us. When there’s only a little, it behaves meekly; when it grows, it becomes brash and has its way with us.”“On that day I became convinced that it is the words of women that deeply wound other women.”
“Words, after all, are nothing by themselves. They burst into meaning only in the minds they’ve entered.”
Spoiler:
The Essence of the story:
After a moment of particular crisis in the family: “Amma and Malati noticed Anita’s dissent. It’s an unwritten rule that all members come to the family’s aid when it is threatened. Anita had broken that rule. She should not have.” Anita is the narrator’s wife, an “outsider” to the family and, as the rather threatening “she should not have” indicates, a potential “ant” that may need to be quashed.View all my reviews
