Book #7 - The Mystic Masseur

This one was for my World Literature in English class. And, you know, Nobel Prize in Literature notwithstanding, I really really did not like it. I don't get what all the glowing reviews are talking about. I finished this and my first thought was, "What the hell did I just read, and why?" It's incredibly short - 207 pages in my edition - and the characters almost invariably speak in this godawful dialect that reminded me of trying to read Huckleberry Finn in high school. The dialect and the falling-asleep factor are what made me take a whole week to read these two hundred measly pages. The humor gets old fast: irony is great, but come on. This book seems to survive on nothing else. At times I think the main character, Ganesh, is more clever than the other characters and is subtly manipulating them in amusing ways, but others he hardly seems any more intelligent than the rest of this Dickensian (no, that's not a compliment) cast of uneducated yokels.

God I'm so glad this book is done.

Title: The Mystic Masseur
Author: V.S. Naipaul
Pages: 207

7 / 24 books. 29% done!

Book #7 - The Mystic Masseur

This one was for my World Literature in English class. And, you know, Nobel Prize in Literature notwithstanding, I really really did not like it. I don't get what all the glowing reviews are talking about. I finished this and my first thought was, "What the hell did I just read, and why?" It's incredibly short - 207 pages in my edition - and the characters almost invariably speak in this godawful dialect that reminded me of trying to read Huckleberry Finn in high school. The dialect and the falling-asleep factor are what made me take a whole week to read these two hundred measly pages. The humor gets old fast: irony is great, but come on. This book seems to survive on nothing else. At times I think the main character, Ganesh, is more clever than the other characters and is subtly manipulating them in amusing ways, but others he hardly seems any more intelligent than the rest of this Dickensian (no, that's not a compliment) cast of uneducated yokels.

God I'm so glad this book is done.

Title: The Mystic Masseur
Author: V.S. Naipaul
Pages: 207

7 / 24 books. 29% done!