A River Sutra

Rating:
Summary: Winding down the thread
Review: This book was profound, but easy enough to read in a La-z-boy if thats your style. It's a series of short stories all joined by a common thread, the narmada river. Filled with hindu ascetics and Indian playboys, A River Sutra should be the first book you read about India-its kind of like a primer to India's often ignored jungles. This book flows, and its not sketchy like some other writers who write about India.

Rating:
Summary: Floating Aimlessly Down a River Sutra
Review: When I began to read A River Sutra, I expected it to exhibit the qualities of a well-written novel that my English teachers would approve of; after all, the school assigned it to me as a summer reading project. As I tried to understand the novel, however, I initially felt confused by the story line, or lack thereof. The theme Gita Mehta tried to convey, her overall message, also left something to be desired; although she made an effort to show that desire stands as the root of all human emotion, the stories she told to try and convey that theme didn't connect in the way she presumably wanted them to.
Unfortunately, creation of confusion and failure to express her thesis properly were not the only ways in which Mehta did not succeed. In the different accounts she used to try and communicate her theme, she wrote of many different characters, each with different styles of speaking; many of these characters spoke in a strange, often grammatically incorrect dialect. Regrettably, Mehta failed to make the transition between clumsy dialect and what should have been graceful narrative; instead, the parts of the stories that she recounts seem awkward, as if written by an immature author without any literary instincts. The text also left me in need of closure and fulfillment about many issues; one specific example rests in the main character, who, despite hearing stories that would normally change a person's entire outlook on life, does not change one bit by the end of the novel.
Thankfully, the novel did exhibit some good features. Mehta based her work on stories surrounding the Narmada River, a holy river in India; she did an excellent job of describing the myths and doctrines concerning the river, and the reader truly can understand why pilgrims came from afar to worship the holy body of water. Mehta also represents her characters well by having them speak in styles congruent with their personas.
The novel would have been much more enjoyable if the different stories Mehta recounted had related to each other in a more fluid and relevant manner. She also should have tried to make the theme more consistent throughout the novel; it seemed as if she attempted to make a different point in each of her stories. If one were to read this book, one should expect to be confused by Mehta's writing style, yet enamored by each individual story she tells. One should read this book if he or she doesn't like to be led through a novel by the hand; someone who wants to interpret a theme without knowing what the author wishes the theme to be.