Revisionist History: All This Could Be Different & Age of Vice
When what you think is not always what you think. Let's discuss. #109
99% of the time, I know what I think about a book both during the read and upon completion. This is - I’m no neuroscientist here but - I believe how thinking works? Receive information, form opinions, pet your cat, the world turns.
And while I will promptly forget the specifics of a book (alongside what just happened in my last meeting, the names of my college roommates, and the grammatical distinction between further and farther which I have to look up EVERY TIME) - well, I generally have a confident and deeply seeded feeling about my reactions to said book that holds up under review.
But there’s that 1% of books where I read the book, form an opinion, feel strongly in said opinion, and then as time and consideration go by, come to revise that opinion by several degrees!
For example - Real Life is one of those books, which I did not totally love upon reading and found a bit both viscerally lacerating and substantively like “how is this character experiencing trauma after trauma without relief,” but which I still think about regularly three years later and have now decided that my initial response was deeply simplistic, it was powerful and brutally smart, and the author deserved to win all the awards. OH I feel so good getting that off my chest, I’ve felt guilty about it for a while.
We can change our minds! As generational buddha Rocky Balboa said to a group of unfriendly-turned-exclamatory Cold War Russians in Rocky IV, a film which is inferior only to Rocky III in the Rocky Balboa oeuvre:
This week’s two selections fit into this category, in different directions. Let me know what you thought - or even better, let me know a book about which you’ve changed your mind with hindsight and wisdom! EVERYBODY CAN CHANGE!
So, award-winning All This Could Be Different was a verrrrry slow burn for me. I actually started it in November, said “blech,” and rebuked it from my sight for four months. Back then I wrote, “It just felt like disaffected millennial worker bees who suffer through a grim job, have unsatisfying conversations, and then float home to their crummy apartments and talk about masturbation.” And that’s not wholly inaccurate but upon a second try, I also understand the depth and power of it.
Power summary: Recent college grad and first generation immigrant Sneha seems to be on an upward trajectory as she gets a job, makes friends, and falls for an alluring woman, but as her circumstances change and become more precarious, it’s her community that tries to carve out a different path.
The author precisely captures a certain kind of precariousness during “your twenties” meets “late stage capitalism” with all its existential flatness and slippery downward spiral, immature fragility, and fledgling hope. The character is made that much richer through the tension of her family and her identity. It’s extremely human and uncomfortably messy and so confidently voiced; this author knows how to write characters. There’s a certain Sally Rooney / Jami Attenberg quality for me (did some of you just get excited) where I wanted to shake Sneha sometimes and say “you actually are not helpless here!” but it’s justified in the writing, so I guess that’s the point. Whether I respond to a character or not, it’s certainly a perspective, and I would recommend this book if it sounds appealing to you.
Caveat: at times it feels a bit capital-L literary, and as a result feels a little unnaturally self-aware. For example, Thankam Mathews uses no quotation marks, and sure, I understand the desired effect of feeling more deeply connected to the main characters, and dreamily stream of consciousness, but also like oh I get it you’re so experimental. Enjoy your writers’ retreats. But all in all - a slow burn in a positive way!
A few lambs were sacrificed in the reading of this book. Let me explain HERE.
On the semi-flip side we have Age of Vice which took popular reading by storm, in an “everyone must read this immediately it’s the BOoK of ThE YeAr” fashion.
Power summary: A family saga and crime drama written from the three perspectives of: Ajay, a poor servant who rises through the ranks; Sunny, the debaucherous son of an influential man; and Neda, the journalist who is caught between her thoughts and her desires.
I personally devoured all 560 pages as soon as I got it from the library thinking “ooh, this is so engrossing.” You know, that read-it-while-you-brush-your-teeth-because-you-don’t-want-to-put-it-down-for-one-second kind of book. (Oh, just … middle-schoolers and me? Okay.) The characters were well done, the plot and POV were intricate and intriguing if in need of a severe edit (we did not need to see every incident from all three sides, I don’t think), the settings were beautiful.
It’s described as “Slumdog Millionaire meets The Godfather” which I find both accurate and overreaching. Meaning: it was a descriptively adept, well-plotted, escapist read that I thought was great and a week later I couldn’t really remember anything about it nor do I have any lasting connection to it. I will be surprised if this has a lot of cultural staying power (though I just heard that the first printing of Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone was only 500 copies so what do I or anyone know?)
If we know nothing about me it’s that I really should edit out 20% of my parenthetical clauses BUT ALSO that I wholeheartedly embrace escapist books! So as a mystery/saga/thriller, it’s good! You’ll probably enjoy it! It’s clearly (frustratingly?) designed as a trilogy so I’m sure I’ll read the others! Just - at one point I thought it might be in my top 10 of the year because of the reading thrill ride but like Hubba Bubble grape gum, the feeling faded away a little too quickly for me.
All links go to Bookshop.org - if you’re going to buy books, please consider shopping there and supporting independent bookstores! Or shopping directly with said bookstores! Or the library, that’s okay too! Whatever you want.
Also:
People use both further and farther to mean “more distant.” However, American English speakers favor farther for physical distances and further for figurative distances.