Kalkatta

I thoroughly enjoyed Kalkatta. Basu has a knack for bringing the city's sights,sounds, and smells to life, and creates an engrossing world that is often hidden or out of sight. The narrative moves at a good pace and holds the reader's interest.

The shortcomings of the novel are in the character development. Most characters exist as archetypes rather than real people, designed to fill a role and enable Basu to make a point. It would have been good to get a little bit more substance from some of these characters, who had the potential to be very interesting, as evidenced by Rani and Miri. Strangely, although we spend the entire novel with Jami, he remains somewhat aloof and ephemeral....again perhaps because he's more of a cypher than a complete character. Basu seems to have preferred creating a mosaic rather than a character driven novel.

I found the ending to be somewhat abrupt, but I understand the reason why it ended as it did .