Review of Gregory David Roberts' "Shantaram"

Roberts is absolutely in love with Bombay. Bombay is one of the main characters in "Shantaram"; it's noisy, dirty, criminal, over-over-over populated, but the writer loves 'her' and he isn't shy about expressing his love over and over in this big volume.

Repetition seems to be the plague of today's writers.

There are so many unnecessary details and repetitious emotions expressed in this book, that at some point I started skimming and skipping them. One mistake contemporary writers make is not differentiating life and literature. One might feel an emotion every minute, every day, but literature doesn't forgive every thought of the feeling or every second of the story described in such abundant detail.

But in this case I understood why the writer was doing it. The novel is about love. He loves the city, loves every person he encounters, loves his journey, his experiences, new understandings, his redemption, and he loves to describe them just as he sees them in his head. He doesn't want the reader to escape with a half-ass picture of the world he's created.

Having said that... I loved loved loved Robert's language. His metaphors are new, fresh, imaginative and beautiful... His vocabulary is vast and complex. He reminded me of China Melville, who also uses forgotten and eloquent language that challenges the reader. Every paragraph has either a line you want to quote or some profound thought.

Roberts has his philosophy and opinions about good and evil, war and sin, love and hate. He knows how to start and end his chapters (a very difficult thing to do), he treats his reader to a good piece of writing, and at the end of the book he elevates his reader's philosophical senses to the maximum.

I truly liked living this story with its hero. The hero's journey is so large that my life seemed mundane, boring and pale in comparison. And most of all I loved the fact that the hero found love everywhere he went. Love saved him, helped him and kept him alive. He loves life itself and looks at the world with childlike awe and a fragile, fluttering heart.

4 stars