Sunday 20 April 2008

Shantaram-azing!

Books. Pretty great huh? With all the competing media around these days, my reading habit has been sorely neglected. Sinful for someone who claims to like reading and writing. That aside, I just finished the book, the cover helpfully displayed to the left, and found it so enjoyable it's worth a mention on this predominantly digitally fixated blog. As with many good books I've never heard of, once read you start seeing it everywhere. Every other person on the tube seems to have a copy under their arm, inspiring knowing winks and cheerful smiles and head waggles. Except of course, your copy is hidden from sight so they just think you're a weirdo. It is also I hear, set to become a big budget epic starring Johnny Depp, so not totally out of the playhouse's realm then.

I attempted to summarise the story to a friend. I didn't do well and apparently made it sound boring. Although if you think the story of a man who escapes from an Australian prison to become a doctor in a Bombay slum, gets recruited by the local godfather as a forger and gun-runner, and eventually goes to war in Afghanistan is dull, well, you must lead a very stimulating existence. And that really is bare bones, a hundred little adventures play out between these covers. Perhaps most stunning is that it all happened. This guy is for real and another friend of mine (the one who gave me the book, thank you x) ran into him in Goa. Wowsers. Of course it is a novel - Roberts describes the experiences as real, but the characters as fictional. Fictional or not, I'll freely admit that I wept like a little girl when one of the beloved characters dies, such is the quality of their realisation. I don't think I've ever cried at a book before, and if I have, I certainly can't remember when. If you need a good lengthy, rewarding book for a holiday or whatever, check this out, it is an exceptional, beautifully crafted read. And if you haven't read a book for a while, reading helps build your vocabulary and ability to construct sentences, so you er, really like, should.


3 comments:

Grandma Julia said...

Now you made me feel like there is one real reading adventure I would miss if I would not read this one. :)

Munial said...

Absolutely! Let me know if you get hold of it and like it grandma!

Anonymous said...

youre welcome x