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The Zigzag Way
A Novel
by Anita Desai
A Harvard graduate student finds himself adrift in Mexico in this short novel from the acclaimed author.
Houghton Mifflin, 176 pages
11/09/2004
$23.00
ISBN: 0618042156
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Booklist Donna Seaman
Infused with history, compassion, and a sense of wonder, Desai's heightened and affecting novel is ravishing in both its specificity and its universality. [1 Oct 2004, p.307]
Boston Globe Margot Livesey
The narrative strategy of the novel also mirrors these zigzags as Desai deftly loops back into the past. This virtuosity, however, does come at a certain cost.
Chicago Tribune Y. Euny Hong
Desai has a shrewd, spot on and, at times, unforgiving understanding of human dynamics, and she draws from an impressive wellspring of knowledge. [7 Nov 2004]
Daily Telegraph Kate Chisholm
Desai, whose novels are usually set in her native India, brilliantly re-creates an atmosphere, a scene, an instant in time, but not just the superficial dazzle of a crowded bazaar, or the outward meaning of a conversation in a hotel bedroom. She writes about the edginess, the confusion, the sensations that lie beneath.
Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Armstrong
All of The Zigzag Way's threads intertwine during a modern Day of the Dead celebration -- resulting in a beautifully rendered combination of history, folklore, and modern fiction.
Kirkus Reviews
Sensitive proof that understanding lies as much in the details as in the broad strokes.
Los Angeles Times Susan Salter Reynolds
Desai's novel proves that metaphor provides good, strong structure for a novel -- just as strong as your every- day, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other plot or story line. [14 Nov 2004, p.R11]
The Guardian Maya Jaggi
At its best, The Zigzag Way is a stinging reminder of that past, while slyly dissecting the greed and delusion that are still so often part of the traveller's baggage.
The Spectator Lee Langley
If it falls short of Desai’s finest novels with their masterly anatomising of a society and the tender yet forensic skill with which she examined her characters, The Zigzag Way still offers Desai followers her poised, immaculate prose, keen eye and skill at pinpointing a character or a mood.
The New York Times Book Review Jennifer Schuessler
The novel has the feel of being worked up from a tidbit stumbled upon in an archive or a guidebook, then trained along a trellis of neatly diagrammed meaning rather than allowed to grow wild in a thicket of character and situation.
Publishers Weekly
While Desai has uncovered a compelling chapter in Mexican history, the novel is a meandering, disappointing journey.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Marianne Ackerman
The distillation of character and plot feels more like an extended outline than a full rendering of the material's inherent ambition. [11 Dec 2004, p.D46]
Library Journal Robin Nesbitt
Three times short-listed for the Booker Prize, Desai has amassed fascinating material, but in this slender novel of immigrants, love, and familial duty she does not develop her characters deeply enough to make a meaningful narrative. [1 Sept 2004, p.138]
Daily Telegraph Kasia Boddy
It all feels a little too researched. Exploring his own past, Eric understands "for the first time the urgency - and the terror - of knowing". But the novel lacks that urgency.
 The average user rating for this book is 0.0 (out of 10) based on 0 User Votes
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