I finished
A Golden Age at 2am yesterday morning.
It's been a journey. Initially, I
wasn't
engaged. Still I'm frustrated by the fatalism of the main character Rehana,
who loses a husband, her children, neighbours, a lover, and a home, some of them
permanently. Tahmima Anam, the writer, observers her conflicting emotions
acutely, but they don't feel like powerful emotions.
Some
beautiful
passages (
this
one too) began to win my over though, and as the book appeared to be coming
to a tragic, perhaps sickening conclusion, I implored Anam not to end it
brutally.
So, despite my conflicting feelings about A Golden Age, I may well read its
sequel,
The Good Muslim.