Saraswati
Gurnaik Johal
The word epic strikes me as the most appropriate way to describe this novel. It has a vast cast of characters, a thoroughly international list of settings and much to say about the state of the world, particularly when it comes to ecology and, most specifically, water. A lot of work has clearly gone into its creation.
Not for the first time when reading a book of this type, I feel I’ve done it a disservice. Yes, I gave it my attention, and I read it in full, but did I really heed its intricacies in the way such a complex book deserves? Probably not. My usual reading practices—at the end of a busy day, slightly tired; on a train, while trying to block out the man behind me speaking inanities into his phone; briefly, between chores—seem inadequate when it comes to a novel like this. It surely merits, in reading, the same level of time and attention it must have taken in the writing.
All this is to say, I recognise that this is a very good book. I know I missed some things; I definitely skimmed some bits I found less interesting (one of the inevitabilities, I find, of a multi-strand novel like this one is that some of the strands grab me more than others; I whizz through the ones I like less, keen to move onto the next, and then find myself feeling slightly mystified every time the book refers back to the strand I didn’t fully heed). I couldn’t love it (how can one love something that leaves one so aware of one’s inadequacies?!) but I admired it greatly.
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