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My consumption of Audiobooks had been badly hit by working from home. I've only been to my office twice this year and with a total journey time of about 6 hours, I needed to finish this before my loan ran out, so I moved from Audio to ebook for the final 1/5th of the book. I'd been prepared and ordered both through Borrowbox. It worked!

Before moving to the ebook, I read a few of the reviews and I was really confused. Some people absolutely detested this book. They called it 'disgusting' or explicit. Dirty, perhaps! Honestly, I have no idea how this book could create such rage in people. My greatest problem had been one of indifference. I'd have loved to have felt incensed.

It's not a great choice for an audiobook. The jumping back and forth in time can get hard to follow. The reader's lovely voice has a (sadly) soporific effect which isn't ideal when you're on a long commute. Mostly I found it hard to pay attention. If 'disgusting' things had been happening, surely I'd have noticed.

Parts of it are sublime. Parts just a bit weird. Antara's mother Tara is only in her 50s but showing signs of dementia. Antara's grandparents - Nani and Nana - are still sharp as tacks. Mother Tara was a rebel who left her husband, took Antara with her and joined an ashram - perhaps a 'cult' - and became the lover of the 'Baba'. Antara's mother was, to put it bluntly, a pretty terrible mother and now Antara finds herself challenged to become a mother to her mother who in turn was never much of a mother to her. The tension between the two women lies at the heart of the story.

Antara is an artist, famous/notorious for repeatedly drawing the same face over and over again, copying each day the picture she did the day before until the eventual pictures have moved perceptibly away from their origin. That's a bit bonkers but not half so much as when we eventually find out WHO the face belonged to and why it's such a cause of anger to her mother.

The narrator is good with an English-Indian accent and a lovely range of Indian accents for the different characters - and the play time is not too onerous. However, I do think this one is better done on the page or the screen because the story it tells is a bit too rambling to follow by listening alone.