An extended prologue suffering from torturous plotlessness.

2/22/23. I just wanted to edit to add: if you are looking for a book that captures the ugliness, the complexity, the devastation, the beauty, and the horror of life for many millions of people in India, I have found no work better than Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers". Read that. Not this.

Back to my review:
Listened to this book on audible. Let me first say that this narrator is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I would listen to anything he narrates, really. 

In 2007, 2008, and 2009 I spent a total of 8 months in India, primarily in New Delhi, though I traveled a bit. This book was engaging for me from the beginning because it brought back memories of the horrors and ruthlessness that I witnessed there. The characters were familiar and well-written, overall, if a little one-dimensional. 

I'm going to disagree with a lot of reviewers who really like Ajay's opening 200 or so pages. This was a slow, passive slog. It was just extended backstory. Ajay himself is a character without agency who doesn't seem to develop as the backstory drags on.

Neda's portion was a little more interesting because she at least has a little agency in the world. I think Neda was a well-done character, realistic, with a lot of believable, annoying flaws. She reminds me of the classic shtick of many of the young women I met in Delhi during those years. Eventually her story got a little blah too. I think at one point I accidentally moved the dial back an hour and found myself listening to something I had already heard. But rather than thinking I had accidentally jumped backward I actually thought the author was going over the same things again later in the story, as the character reflected on what happened, because this would not have been in anyway outside her established patterns as a writer to this point. 

We finally switch to Sunny, who's a total whiner, but has more agency than all the other characters and actually does things. The story starts at last (I think I was about 12 hours in at 1.3x at this point) and I was engaged and excited. Then the finally present story comes to a SCREECHING halt so we can listen to some rando bad guy that has just appeared--apropos of nothing--give a 2 hour monologue (no joke, at 1.3x speed). I almost stopped entirely and gave up. 

That monologue really ruined the rest of the book for me. I no longer cared about the brief "story" that had finally started, the characters, the outcome. All credibility the author had gained in the brief moments of brilliance were utterly shattered. Not sure if Penguin Random House had to cut all their editors due to the pandemic or what. I will not be buying the sequels. There are flashes of brilliance in the story (hence 2 stars) but that accounts for about 2 hours, the rest is a dragging, monotonous slog, going nowhere, without plot or point. Torturous.