the shadow lines

I am reading again. Two and a half books in two days surely qualifies as a literary resurgence. Divisadero as I have mentioned. Can Anna ever go back again? Are we ever able to sew scars together again? But also The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh about four individuals torn apart by the Calcutta riots. I was told by someone that this was better than the English Patient. Shocked at such heresy I immediately bought and read this. Reader, it is not. Heretic to be included even in the same sentence. Ghosh's writing is ill-ordered, characters caricatured with no heroic appeal, and no weight of tragedy to carry the writing, to imbue meaning through the slightest of gestures. Though he does wield some talent, it is not nearly as much as it is hyped out to be. But perhaps I am simply not the right person to write a comparison piece on the two. One idea he mentioned was quite stunning in its simplicity, that love was directly opposed to the idea of justice, that he had thrown everything he had into the scales and it had not moved by a tremor. As it is quoted in Divisadero, whether we are the heroes of our own lives or someone else is, these pages will show.