I'm still trying to figure out what I got out of this book. The Tibetan facts/history were not effectively organized, I didn't get to know any interesting characters, and although this book is billed as a sort of elegy for the author's deceased family, other than a few pages on the father's travels and spare paragraphs here and there during the latter half in the book revealing what happened to his sister, they're ultimately non-entities.

I have a feeling a month from now I won't remember much about this book at all.

I was even turned off from the poetic aspects of the writing, some sections were not much more than batches of word soup, and he treads dangerously close to exotification. I'll give the guy a pass on that because it seems that his disconnect with the people around him is a product of his grief, but if he described any of the younger monks as girlish one more time I was going to sprain something from side-eyeing so hard.

There was one paragraph on page 142 that absolutely smashed my heart into pieces. It's just a touch of what this book could have been, but I don't think the author is ready to properly access those places emotionally. If he ever does though, I'll be first in line to read that book.