Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. 

I only started being cognizant of Booker Prize winners a couple of years ago when I read Milkman by Anna Burns, which I loved. I also loved this year's Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo so I guess my expectation to love all Booker Prize winners was pretty high.

I think this is one of those books that many people will love for good reason but it just wasn't for me. It's a very slow start and only really picks up slightly around the mid-point but by that point, I was pretty exasperated with the characters and the narrative style. Roy acknowledges that the structure of this novel is unconventional. It begins at the end and ends in the middle. The kind of writing that will win prestigious writing but leaves readers feeling disjointed and disengaged.

The main characters, Ammu, Estha and Rahel, go through a lot. Be prepared for some traumatic stuff. But how everything is structure left me not fully understanding how they were affected or why their behaviour evolves in the way in does. TBH the character I cared the most about was Velutha, a secondary, maybe even tertiary character, with little air time. 

One thing I did love is how the reader is placed into the Ayememen culture with little to no reference points. Language and culture are not explicitly explained, the reader just has to go with it and work it out as they read. I love this because it challenges the notion that Western, European culture is standard and everything else must be explained for that gaze.

Overall, I did appreciate the experimentation with language and style but all of this means nothing if I'm not engaged with the story as a whole.