Read it!
I enjoyed The Story of My Assassins very much, so when I found another novel by Tarun Tejpal, I thought I should give it a try. I was not disappointed. One of the beautiful things that Tejpal is able to do is spin fantasies. He does it so beautifully that you don't even consider the improbability of what he's saying after a while. It's fantastic.
The Valley of Masks is about a breakaway religious cult who value equality above all. They all look the same, they all have a function. The further you get into this novel, the more social commentaries you see. Religious fervousness, community identiy, us versus them, personal identity, what society holds as ideals, Tarjun Tejpal marches out one by one in a subtle but unignorable way.
I personally would call this not a horror novel....but something similar. By the end of the book, what was meant to be noble and good has morphed into something absolutely horrific, that if the narrator is correct, will result in his death rather than a separation from. The first person narration/memories only enhance the horror because you know that the narrator knows what's coming. What makes it even more disturbing to me is that I know people who hold the same ideals, albeit not to that degree, about relationships and the ideal of identity/ability equating to value.
I won't narrate the whole story line because that would rob you of the beauty of unwinding the story that Tejpal has so artfully spun, line by line. Definitely worth the read.
~Becky~
No comments:
Post a Comment