itibaren Shero Chak, Pakistano itibaren Shero Chak, Pakistano

The reviews say things like, "you've never read a novel like this before"; Winner of the Booker Prize, etc. Well, sometimes you want to read a little magical realism, right? Like you are yearning to re-read Cien Años de Solidad by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I also feel like that sometimes. But I only gave this book three stars because it is 500+ pages of this: "Mesmerized by the cobalt shadows, the paradoxical ultramarine air, and the silver glances of the dead, I listened to the hard images of joy." Really, I mean, come on. Couldn't you just paste that sentence onto any one of the 500 pages and leave it there? Since, although it sounds beautiful if you read it aloud, the reader may ask whether the words have any meaning? I can tell you that the narrative portion of the story is not concerned with color names, or how to pick out paint, or about painting, really or etymology of the naming of different shades of blue, or anything like that. (Basically, the tale is a rather disjointed account of a boy wandering around hallucinating and once in a while decribing his father in slightly varying degrees of drunkenness and the lady down the street maybe involved in some kind of voodoo, somewhere in Africa.) So it is sort of entertaining, if you are in the mood.