The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

The Hungry Tide is a novel full of ideas, none of them found to have an easy answer. In Kanai's and Piya's world, they prefer the structure of science or business where they can view everything as black or white. In the Sundarbans where the tide changes the environment daily, nothing is certain and everything in life is a shade of gray. It's a place where tigers kill hundreds of people a year, but since they're a protected species, killing a tiger that has been preying on a village brings in the goverment authorities to mete out punishment. In an environment where life is fragile, the essence of any person is broken down to its core. Amitav Ghosh lets the tide country break down the barriers of both society and his characters.

While The Hungry Tide is about the struggle for each person to find their place in the world, it's not a novel of constant action and suspense. This doesn't slow the pace of the novel. Amitav Ghosh keeps the pages turning with the history of the tide country, the stories of the local deities, scientific information, the back stories for each character, and Nirmal's journal of what happened to Kusum and her son. At times, the history and scientific information start to overwhelm the story, and these carry on for a bit too long before the final voyage up the river begins. Someone already knowledgable about the Sundarbans or cetology might find this book dragging at times with these details, but the explanation of the exotic, whether scientific, geographic, or historical, can be as engaging as the lives of the characters. A bit of judicious editing about three-quarters of the way through the novel to eliminate the history of the scientific research of the river dolphin would have been helpful.

This is a small complaint, though. For the most part, The Hungry Tide is a compelling book about ordinary people bound together in an exotic place that can consume them all. It's the basest of human emotions, love, jealousy, pride, and trust, that will make the difference. That's a lesson we all can learn, again, as we follow Piya, Kanai, and Fokir into the heart of tide country.

Credit to:

W. R. Greer

Copyright © 2004 reviewsofbooks.com