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ncrowe8182's review against another edition
3.0
Writing was great just not my kind of book other people would enjoy it
scorpstar77's review against another edition
3.0
Siddharth is a tween boy growing up in Connecticut as the youngest son of a very intelligent, very conservative, very opinionated Indian immigrant father. When a tragedy strikes his family, the very difficult time of a non-white boy's adolescence in the US becomes even more difficult. Siddharth fluctuates between self-obsession with his place in the social heirarchy of middle school (including his vacillation between a friend who likes him for who he is and the "cool" kids who finally accept him but are way into the wrong things), his worry about his father's depression, his loneliness since his brother got into college, and his confusion about world issues he doesn't really understand.
This is a bit of an interesting, if sad, coming-of-age story, but it didn't feel like there was a real plot there. It was like reading a long blog of someone's day-to-day life and development...and it was an interesting life, but there wasn't a solid story arc. The father was particularly interesting - I have never in my life, among all the Indians and Indian descendants I've known, all of the Indian-perspective books I've read, heard someone who lived through Partition praise the British for their role, but this character does. Perhaps predictably, his older son takes the opposite position after going to college, and Siddharth doesn't know what to think (or why he should even care). Possible trigger warning: there is a crap-ton of racism and sexism in this book. The racism is among most of the characters, the brown ones and white ones alike. The sexism is the standard tween-boy-watching-porn-and-obsessed-with-sex/masturbating variety. None of it struck me as the perspective of the author, just part of the characters' ages, backgrounds, personalities, and/or sociopolitical beliefs, but if that's going to bother you...well, there you go.
This is a bit of an interesting, if sad, coming-of-age story, but it didn't feel like there was a real plot there. It was like reading a long blog of someone's day-to-day life and development...and it was an interesting life, but there wasn't a solid story arc. The father was particularly interesting - I have never in my life, among all the Indians and Indian descendants I've known, all of the Indian-perspective books I've read, heard someone who lived through Partition praise the British for their role, but this character does. Perhaps predictably, his older son takes the opposite position after going to college, and Siddharth doesn't know what to think (or why he should even care). Possible trigger warning: there is a crap-ton of racism and sexism in this book. The racism is among most of the characters, the brown ones and white ones alike. The sexism is the standard tween-boy-watching-porn-and-obsessed-with-sex/masturbating variety. None of it struck me as the perspective of the author, just part of the characters' ages, backgrounds, personalities, and/or sociopolitical beliefs, but if that's going to bother you...well, there you go.
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