The City of Devi in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 10, 2012 Sam rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1-contemp-literary, setting-india, setting-asia-south, reviewed, read-2013, authors-asian-descent-outside-asia

When we crack open The City of Devi, we meet a woman who’s venturing across the city in search of her husband, who has mysteriously disappeared. As Sarita makes her way to where she thinks he is, we get flashbacks to when she and her husband first meet as well as a peculiar complication that hangs over their marriage. Later on her fate gets intertwined with another character whom we also follow around, both through the city and through flashbacks. This guy, Jaz, is also in search of his loved on When we crack open The City of Devi, we meet a woman who’s venturing across the city in search of her husband, who has mysteriously disappeared. As Sarita makes her way to where she thinks he is, we get flashbacks to when she and her husband first meet as well as a peculiar complication that hangs over their marriage. Later on her fate gets intertwined with another character whom we also follow around, both through the city and through flashbacks. This guy, Jaz, is also in search of his loved one as he thinks back to their relationship. Why did the husband disappear? How are Sarita and Jaz connected? While we don’t find out the answer to that first question for quite some time, we can guess the second one pretty easily, maybe a third of the way into the story.

These personal narratives unfurl against a tense backdrop as Mumbai is holding its collective breath, waiting to see if it will be hit by nuclear annilation amidst swirling rumors about whether (or when) the bombs will drop. Is this just some conspiracy set up by Hindu fundamentalists or Muslim fundamentalists…or even the Chinese? Nobody knows yet. Manil Suri takes various present day tensions and undercurrents of discontent and amps it up to 100 in this version of the world where cyber attacks are crippling large swathes of the globe and where on the subcontinent Hindus and Muslims are pitted against each other, state brinksmanship is going crazy, political bosses and mafias are flexing their muscles, and incarnations of goddesses are ostensibly coming to save the masses. It’s a disturbing vision because it’s an uncomfortably plausible one.

The jam-packed book doesn’t stop there, because we also have a love triangle; criss-crossing-the-city-chases; in-the-nick-of-time-escapes; coincidences galore Bollywood-style; as well as ruminations not just of the aforementioned religious divide, but also of identity, love, and loyalty in their different iterations. It was brave of Suri to throw together this melange. There’s a certain fearlessness about that and the way that he very matter-of-factly and in detail portrays the relationship between two gay men. So, I’ll tip my hat to Suri for that by adding on an extra star to the rating. But the thing is—all of this sounds better as an idea than it turned out to be in execution.

Despite how readers get into the heads and hearts of both Sarita and Jaz, their stories still felt flat, flat, flat. The dialogues seemed stilted and unrealistic and some of the writing was down and out pedestrian. Sorry to be pedestrian myself in using the b-word, but both of their stories were just plain *boring.* The narrative didn’t get off the ground enough for me to appreciate the slivers of vitality that did appear periodically; often times these instances of liveliness seemed more like accidental spills into this huge vat of boredom. It’s strange to accuse a book that tries to tackle multiple storylines and themes with quite a lot of action as lacking “life,” but that’s how little resonance it had on this reader at least.
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