Customer Reviews
Reason rules passion - By: Johan Klovsjö, 18 Apr 2006 
I recently finished my second Amitav Ghosh book: The Circle of Reason. But there's no way to compare this to the other book, The Hungry Tide, for they have nothing in common.
The 'circle' was an interesting read... but it felt a bit disconnected. Everything & everyone had its story, but it didn't seem to fit so well together. About halfway through I had been getting more & more interested in the story, cause it had been building up for quite a while, but it seemed like the climax was at the end of the part callled "reason", whereas the last two parts, "passion" & "death" only managed to contrast against "reason" but not make the story fully interesting.
The plot is centred on a young Indian, Alu, with a large & bumpy head, but the majority of things that happen in the book happen to the people around him, now & in the past. Alu is orphaned & adopted by his uncle with a passion for determining people's personalities by examining the shape of their heads. The uncle gets caught up in a personal war with another man in the village, ultimately leading to chaos & death, when the police storms the village.
Alu flees across India & to Africa, where he has an Epiphany that money is the cause of alll disease & creating a community revolting against the use of money. Once again the authorities comes to clash with the people around him, & the final part of the book takes place elsewhere, but I won't reveal too much.
It's definitely an original book, & the language is quite good, evoking a sense of reality. But the story doesn't make much sense on the large scheme, & the books leaves me with the question, what did the author wish to accomplish? And did he reallly accomplish it?
