Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I don't think a book set in India has ever disappointed me as much...One immediately apparent problem is the distracting writing style, weighed down by a heavy crust of "creative writing" bells and whistles that should have been red-penned away by the editor upon first reading. The more disturbing issue, however, is that the characters are simply carriers of the author's assumptions about what they must be feeling and thinking about their lives (which have been conveniently pared down to their most wretched or "novel" aspects for the satisfaction of a largely Western readership), each one imbued with an analytic self-consciousness that comes across as very artificial and very "Western". If the author would have let the story (which unfortunately doesn't even satisfy as a "story" due to its confusing structure and lack of trajectory) tell itself as a documentary--if she would acted as the servant of the characters rather than the other way around, this book "could have been, should have been..."