The great thing about young writers is that you can be all smug and
unreasonably proud for reading their complete works, or at least all their
fiction books (as it’s the case for me and Kunrzu). Let’s just ignore the fact
that at the end of the day Kunzru has only written four novels so far.
To me, nothing will ever equal the impact and the depth of My Revolutions, but Gods Without Men was a lot more enjoyable than The Impressionist (I liked it pretty much as much as I liked Transmissions, with the sentimental
sections in this case replaced by wacky but entertaining mystic ones). The book
has been compared to works by David Mitchell and Kurt Vonnegut, but I actually
saw quite a lot of Philip Roth (American
Pastoral) and Don DeLillo (White
Noise).
As usual, Kunzru writes beautifully, and succeeds in making the story of
Jaz and Lisa gripping and touching (In particular when he describes their lives
in the public eye). However, I have the feeling that some of the characters are
slightly too stereotyped (in particular the nerdy Jaz and the British Nicky,
who just uses a few British idioms too many to be fully credible).
The mysteries of the afterlife don’t interest me. Kunzru’s recounting of
them, however, does.
