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Women's Fiction

An Obedient Father

An Obedient Father

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: pretty lousy and depressing
Review: It seems that Akhil Sharma got all the facts of life wrong; In fact seems to have used the crude formula of first trying to attract the audience by saying that "psst... come read my book...this has got hot incest". And then saying later..."chi chi..this is wrong..." Well after the initial promos I purchased the novel, intrigued. Only to be left badly disappointed. His characters are pretty cliched and cardboard. None of them ever have a happy moment. And his portrayel of India is very touristy stuff. No I did not find the story convincing at all. So I think even one star is too high for it. Mr Akhil you should write more believable and cnontemperory stuff next time....

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Unpleasant reality
Review: No heroes, no adventure, just the dreary cruel story of a weak corrupt and pathetic man and the harm he inflicts. The corruption of the protagonist is set against a background of chaos and corruption in India as a whole. This does not make for pleasant or uplifting reading but the author should be commended for well written, uncompromising realism.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Pathetic character -- pathetic book
Review: Ram Karan is a corrupt public official in Inida, and even more corrupt as a father or faimly man. He finds himself confronted with his sins as both a public official AND family man late in middle age. Sounds like an interesting premise -- too bad it never goes anywhere.

I like stories about flawed characters, unsympathetic characters, but they must devel into the psyche and motivations of the character to be truly worth reading. This book is lacking in this area -- almost to the point of banality. I still cannot figure out how books such as this get "critical acclaim." I felt I wasted the few hours I spent reading this book.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: oh!What a lousy book!
Review: Seems that all these so called Indian writers who choose to go west look for a formula to cause sensation. And incest is the big word for them. But I guess getting an audience and advance thru shock treatment is what is in their mind and not good stories. This book is the pits. I found it sheer bad and irritating, though not as bad as Raj kamal jha. Sure there are some images of India which make sense if you come here as a tourist. So is a guilt and hangup of sex. Sharma should immediately quit writing, it'll be good for all of us. There is no other way of summing up my feelngs.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Brilliant But Sad, Disturbing
Review: Sharma initially manages to generate enormous contempt for the main character, but near the end generates pity and simple sadness for his unhappy state. The author writes with clarity and honesty the madness that consumes the main character when he gives in to his selfishness and how he tries desperately to redeem himself.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Scary Funny Brilliant
Review: The book is a compulsive read, partially I think because of its humor. I was amazed how incredible cruelty could be described without losing the humanity of victim and victimizer. I was also fascinated by all the political machinations.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A pathetic book
Review: The characters are weak...and the story line not worth reading.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Read the Excerpt. Don't Bother with the Book.
Review: The excerpt in The New Yorker was so disturbing and yet so very compelling that I had to get this book. Unfortunately, that was the best chunk of this first novel by Akhil Sharma. It's not a terrible book, but it's not really all that interesting, either. It also bothered me that the second chapter is told from the point of view of the daughter, and then it's just completely dropped (I expected an alternating narrative). Ram Karan, the main character, is indeed an odious fellow, but that wasn't the reason why I didn't like this book. It's just a plodding, emotionally lukewarm work.

- SJW

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Read the Excerpt. Don't Bother with the Book.
Review: The excerpt in The New Yorker was so disturbing and yet so very compelling that I had to get this book. Unfortunately, that was the best chunk of this first novel by Akhil Sharma. It's not a terrible book, but it's not really all that interesting, either. It also bothered me that the second chapter is told from the point of view of the daughter, and then it's just completely dropped (I expected an alternating narrative). Ram Karan, the main character, is indeed an odious fellow, but that wasn't the reason why I didn't like this book. It's just a plodding, emotionally lukewarm work.

- SJW

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good Writer Creates Horrible Book
Review: This book is hard to review. If you consider the quality of the writing, it is a well-done book. It is rich in those little details that give a setting authenticity. The on-again, off-again water and electricity that are integral to daily life, the daily humiliations and aggravations of living in overcrowded, impoverished conditions -- these details create a strong sense of place and reality.

Unfortunately all that skill is wasted on a tawdry story of private and public corruption. The author is trying to demonstrate that public corruption leads to private corruption -- the sins of the office brought home to the family. However, the story doesn't bear that out. As Ram becomes more publically corrupt, he is more tormented by his private corruption -- the reverse of the author's intended theme.

The crime at the heart of this book is incest. The blurbs and reviews on the cover dance around that, bundling his petty corruption as a bag man for a bureaucrat with his crime against his youngest daughter by labeling both corruption. Well, yes they are, but if a book is about incest, reviewers should say so.

What is so disturbing about this book is not the incest itself, but how the author writes about it. It's prurient in its detail, nauseatingly so. Others have written frankly and in detail about incest without seeming to enjoy it so much. There are some fine books that deal with this subject --- but never once in reading them do you get the sense that the author is exploring in print what he dare not do in life. In An Obedient Father, that is the sense the author conveys -- a fascination and attraction to this crime that is disturbing and corrupt.

Worse, the author portrays the victim of the crime, the hapless daughter, as more unsympathetic and disturbed than her father. She becomes the villain of the piece, abusing her daughter psychologically out an obsessive need to protect her from her grandfather.

Yes, this book is about corruption - public and private. Even more, the book itself, is corrupt at heart in its prurient fascination and empathy with pedophilia.


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