Gods Without Men
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Review
A beautifully written echo chamber of a novel (David Mitchell )
Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them (New Yorker )
One of the most talented writers of his generation (Image )
Kunzru's prose sashays across the page with all the fluid flamboyance of a dance (The Times )
Pitch-perfect masterwork (Publishers Weekly )
Kunzru just gets better and better. This fourth novel is an astonishing tour de force (Kirkus )
The literary skills of Hari Kunzru are evident throughout this complex and disturbing novel . . . beautifully constructed sentences . . . A briliant crossover literary feat (Annie Proulx Financial Times )
A funny, beautifully observed novel that raises big questions about how far events and people, past and present, are connected. But for all the big ideas, it is also surprisingly moving (Psychologies Magazine )
With each novel, Hari Kunzru is proving himself a subtler and more ingenious writer . . . his most ambitious work yet (Scotland on Sunday )
Dizzying scope . . . It is a testament to Kunzru's ability as a writer that Gods Without Men presents so many characters sketched so vividly (New Statesman )
A fine writer with an enviably fertile imagination (Telegraph )
Refreshingly uncompromising (Fatema Ahmed Prospect )
Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them (New Yorker )
One of the most talented writers of his generation (Image )
Kunzru's prose sashays across the page with all the fluid flamboyance of a dance (The Times )
Pitch-perfect masterwork (Publishers Weekly )
Kunzru just gets better and better. This fourth novel is an astonishing tour de force (Kirkus )
The literary skills of Hari Kunzru are evident throughout this complex and disturbing novel . . . beautifully constructed sentences . . . A briliant crossover literary feat (Annie Proulx Financial Times )
A funny, beautifully observed novel that raises big questions about how far events and people, past and present, are connected. But for all the big ideas, it is also surprisingly moving (Psychologies Magazine )
With each novel, Hari Kunzru is proving himself a subtler and more ingenious writer . . . his most ambitious work yet (Scotland on Sunday )
Dizzying scope . . . It is a testament to Kunzru's ability as a writer that Gods Without Men presents so many characters sketched so vividly (New Statesman )
A fine writer with an enviably fertile imagination (Telegraph )
Refreshingly uncompromising (Fatema Ahmed Prospect )
Product Description
2008. The California desert. A four-year-old autistic boy, Raj Matharu, disappears in the wilderness, plunging his wealthy New York parents into the surreal public hell of a media witch-hunt. But the desert is inexplicable and miraculous, and the Matharus' fate is bound up with that of others: a debauched British rock star, on the run from a failed relationship and the sordid excesses of his life; a former member of an extraterrestrial-worshipping cult, now middle-aged but still haunted by transcendent callings; and a teenage Iraqi refugee, who befriends a young black Marine while playing the role of 'Iraqi villager' in a military simulation exercise. Their lives converge in an odd, remote town, near a rock formation called The Pinnacles -- and among the tangled echoes and stories of all those who have travelled before them through this brutally powerful landscape.
A branching and multilayered novel by one of our most acclaimed writers, and a compulsively readable journey into the twists and turns of a handful of human lives, Gods Without Men is a heartfelt exploration of our search for pattern and meaning in a random and chaotic universe.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gods Without Men,
By
This review is from: Gods Without Men (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This novel takes you through various times, from 1778 until 2009, and there is a vast array of characters who all intersect through the ages and a place in the Californian desert. During the book, we meet Schmidt, a man who sets up camp to send out messages to aliens, a cult who grow around him, locals from the small town who interact with them, Iraqi refugees who live nearby and work at the military base, and others who form a seamless story of people who are linked to the desert for various reasons.The main part of the book takes place in 2008, when Jaz and his wife, Lisa, end up at a motel near the desert with their young, autistic son, Raj. Jaz and Lisa's story was an interesting one - the mixed marriage between Lisa, who was Jewish, and Jaz, a Sikh immigrant, was handled with great honesty and the author never shied away from the casual prejudice and stereotypes shown by the various characters. Likewise, the issues of having an autistic child (my nephew is severely autistic and I thought the author wrote those scenes brilliantly) were dealt with truthfully and with great sympathy. Jaz and Lisa have been asked to leave various hotels before, because of Raj's behaviour and noise, which is why they are staying at a cheap hotel in the first place. They obviously both love Raj, but he has caused stress and problems in their marriage. Lisa is tired, exhausted and feels undermined by Jaz and his family. Jaz feels guilty for preferring to be at work and half wishes his life could return to how it was before he became a father, when he and Lisa were united, in love and happy. After a huge row, Lisa and Jaz decide to visit the desert and, while they are there, Raj disappears. One moment he is there, the next gone, and the parents are thrown into the media frenzy which accompanies any missing child appeal. To make the situation worse, a British rock star is also hiding out in the motel, adding to the rush for the cameras to stampede their way towards the story. Jaz and Lisa become the victims of talk shows, the internet and everyone who has an opinion about their parenting and their possible guilt. There are some uncomfortable scenes here about how people are tried in the media and how impossible it is to control now, especially with the internet. I must be honest and say that somehow I have never read a book by Hari Kunzru before, but I will certainly be ordering all his past work. This is a stunning achievement, in which Kunzru tackles some serious issues and manages to make you care about his characters and what will happen to them. I adored Nick and his crisis - wishing he was not hanging out in a hot tub in LA, but in a London pub discussing the football over a beer. The various members of the cult UFO followers were all well written and, throughout the book, the various strands of the story were linked together well. The author never flinches from being honest and fair to all the people he is writing about and, even if certain casual racist remarks, or the wish a parent might feel that a child had never been born make you start, they also make you think. This is a wonderful book and would be ideal for reading groups, as it has so much to discuss and talk about.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The X-Files Meets Carlos Castaneda,
By Monty Archibald "HeavyMetalMonty" (west coast of Scotland) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: Gods Without Men (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Gods Without Men was both compelling and frustrating. Hari Kunzru's descriptive writing is emotive and effective, as is his characterisation. My frustration stemmed from the various plotlines and timelines failing to be tied together to a coherent degree. In that respect, the book could be compared to a literary X-Files, as it leaves the reader to fill in substantial gaps with his/her imagination.The main characters are Raj Matharu (a four-year-old autistic boy) and his parents, Jaz (an American-born Indian) and Lisa (raised in the Jewish faith). Jaz doesn't embrace the religion and culture of his parents, yet it still manages to become a barrier between him and his wife. His parents' superstitious ideas - especially with regards to why their grandson is the way he is - grate on Lisa, causing resentment bordering on hatred. When Raj vanishes into the Californian desert, the clash of ideologies between Lisa and Jaz becomes more evident than ever. Lisa opens herself to the idea that spiritual intervention could help find her lost child. Jaz, however, remains firmly rooted in the material world. Believing that his son has been abducted, Jaz thinks that only physical evidence can lead the path to finding the child. Raj's disappearance happens near The Pinnacles, a rock formation which has for centuries attracted those who believe the stones to have miraculous metaphysical properties. Some chapters are set in the 1800s, when local Native Americans thought The Pinnacles marked the boundary between the lands of the living and the dead. Other chapters, set in the mid-1900s, tell the tale of people flocking to the area to commune with higher intelligences, the Ascended Masters, using The Pinnacles to transmit and receive 'light energy'. The rest of the chapters, set in the present day, focus on Raj's disappearance and subsequent return to the world a changed boy. The present-day occurrences at The Pinnacles echo events from the past, and hint at their significance. Kunzru's descriptions of the area's relevance to various people and eras are eloquent and extremely readable. He doesn't spoon-feed the reader, leaving him/her to draw conclusions and fill in myriad blanks, some of which are perhaps too vast. My only criticism is that some of the story's strands are left flapping as loose ends, hinting that they were superfluous padding rather than integral parts of the plot. The myriad storylines and timelines lack a unified sense of interconnectedness, which wouldn't happen in, for example, a Salman Rushdie novel. That said, 'Gods Without Men' is a well-written book which demonstrates Kunzru's incisive understanding of human nature and behaviour.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Multi-layered story that distracts from an excellent story at its heart,
By
This review is from: Gods Without Men (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Quite literally at the heart of Hari Kunzru's latest novel stands not a person, but strange geographical feature in the California desert - three large rocks known as "The Pinnacles". If you've ever looked at a feature of the landscape and wonder what it has meant to those who have gone before, then you will find a similar stance here. Kunzru's episodic narrative takes in various points in time from 1775 to 2009 all of which centre around this rock structure which has had different meanings for different generations. There are echoes of the past in each new version, but no more than that.It's hugely ambitious, and much more so that the other Kunzru novels that I have read, although it shares with his other books the playful but insightful writing style. He's a writer that has a real feel for human nature. However, for me, it doesn't quite succeed in rising to its ambition. It leaps back and forward in time frame from chapter to chapter in a manner that is disorienting and I couldn't help wondering if it would have been more effective presented as discrete short stories that shared a similar stimulus - which is effectively what it is. Where I was most frustrated though was in the imbalance of the weight and emotional connection to the different threads. By far the dominant thread surrounds the disappearance of an autistic son of a wealthy New York couple set in 2008. The story covers both the father and mother's side and the lead up to the disappearance and the subsequent media furore. It's frighteningly realistic and disturbing with real emotional heart. The problem as far at the book is concerned is that it is such a terrifically well told story that I started to yearn to return to these events when Kunzru wants to draw the reader back to another time. The other main theme was, for me, less engaging. "The Pinnacles" became a focus for the hippy movement in the 1970s and a cult of extra-terrestrial worshipers gathered there. While this element of the book has more in terms of threads to the past and the present day, I was never emotionally engaged in the characters or their plight. It's just a weaker story than the child abduction thread. Amongst the other elements to the book are a Spanish report from the 1770s about the progress of the missionary attempts to bring Christianity to the native American tribes in the area, the meaning of the rocks to the native American tribes and, once more in the recent past, the story of an English rockstar fleeing his debauched life and, briefly, a young Iraqi girl's role in a local marine camp where she role plays a middle east village for military training. These last two threads are also potentially interesting but never really get played out to their full extent. Yes there are themes of displacement and abduction throughout, and there are some generational links of the families involved, but that aside, the sense I had was of a story broadening out without ever quite coming back together again. If you are looking for a multi-layered, complex novel, then Kunzru's engaging writing makes this a good choice - in the hands of a lesser writer this could have been an unholy mess - but my overriding sense was one of frustration that the focus kept drifting from what would have made fascinating stories in their own right which was slightly disappointing.
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