We had a good belly laugh last night. What a tonic for the New Year!
It was “in the way our reviewer told them” that drew our mirth.
If our host’s neighbours were listening, they would have thought that Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh was a humorous book and not one about climate change, people trafficking and natural disasters.
We enjoyed an evening discussing the numerous coincidences, many characters and storylines we had encountered in this month’s book.
We found it very readable but perhaps too ‘wordy’. One member read us a passage that illustrated this very well.
The story centred around a seller of rare books who sets out to find a shrine to the snake goddess in the Sundarbans of India and Bangladesh. This vast area contains mangrove swamps, many waterways and is home to hundreds of species of plants and animals including the Bengal tiger and dolphins. It is being badly affected by climate change even though it is supposed to be a protected region.
Deen, the main character ends up in Venice where he discovers that the merchant who built the shrine in the swamps lived, traded and amassed his wealth.
There is a long list of misfortunes that happen in the book including –
someone being bitten by a cobra, a dog being bitten by a sea snake, a pier attacked by worms, a poisonous spider, masonry falling, whales being stranded and the list goes on.
We felt that there were too many storylines, too many characters and too many fortunate connections and events to make it believable. It was described it as a “boy’s own” story, fast paced and full of incidents but everything being alright in the end.