Gods Without Men (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

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.

This could have been so much better. Kunzru's book is all set around a mystical part of the US desert - and covers a number of time periods.

Beautifully written it may be, but the book as a whole failed to grab me. I found the 'hippy' mystic sections totally unengaging and dull - consequently, wanting to flick through entire sections of a book doesn't make for a great read.

The modern tale of the lost autistic boy in the desert is the most interesting, but it only makes up a mere 1/5 of the entire novel. The remainder felt flat in my eyes.

Average :(

Hari Kunzru has three other novels and after reading this I can't wait to get to the rest. This is a multi layered work of extraordinary complexity that comes across as effortlessly engaging, by the sheer beauty of the writing.

It is hard to give a synopsis since there are just so many different story lines. It starts in 2008 where an Iraqi immigrant is playing a simulation of an Iraqi villager training marines for the war. She falls for a black Marine - all a bit taboo, but their story is the key to unlock all the past converging stories that have surrounded this particular spot in the desert. It has a very distinguished landmark, that of three pinnacles which seem to reach to the starts like prehistoric antenna in a bid to connect to the rest of the universe. And that is exactly what some folk think they are. We are taken backwards and forward through time to all of the people who have been affected or witnessed the strange, other worldly pull of this place.

We have a family whose autistic son is swallowed by the desert, the waitress who gets pulled into the hippy commune for sex, drugs, excitement and something she can not quite fathom. The mining prospectors and a whole plethora of other characters. Kunzru treats all of his creations with equal care, giving them a vivid and visible believability, with their strengths foibles, insecurities and humour.

I found this utterly compelling, very accessible and brilliantly researched; it was also one of those that you just have to race through. I also found myself wanting to know more about nearly all of the characters, as their stories always seemed to end too soon. This a true tour de force of literature and I can only imagine At how long it must have taken to plan and execute such a tapestry of a tale. You may only be a beach/ holiday reader, but this is too good to leave till the next holiday season, so if you want a book that will take you a bit off the beaten track that is also beautifully written, then this will more than live up to your expectations.