Fugue States

by Pasha Malla

The wild and poignant story of two young men--Ash Dhar, who is grieving the death of his father, and his best friend Matt, a pot-head drifter--who embark on a Don Quixote-like quest from Canada to Kashmir, India. A brilliantly entertaining novel by an award-winning, Giller Prize-nominated author.
Pasha Malla burst onto the literary scene in 2009 with his first book, a collection of stories called The Withdrawal Method that won the Trillium Book Award, was a Globe Top 100 pick, and was nominated for the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. In 2012, he published his first novel, People Park, which was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Now, with the extraordinary Fugue States, he gives us a layered, mature work--equal parts funny and poignant, thought-provoking and compulsively, effortlessly readable.
Fugue States opens with the eulogy at a funeral: a eulogy delivered by Ash, a radio host, upon the death of his father, Brij, a Kashmir-born doctor and would-be writer. Later, while sorting through his father's belongings, Ash comes across a mysterious document: a half-completed and utterly baffling work of fiction set (possibly) in Kashmir. Ash begins to wonder about his Indian heritage and the ancestral home he knows only through his father's stories--as a place of brutality and stunning natural beauty. And yet he resists going to visit, skeptical of being another Westerner visiting a war-torn homeland; instead, Ash's best friend Matt--a drifter, pot-head, career bartender, massage therapy student, and self-described "maker of memories" (in other words, a "fool" in the best sense, in the spirit of Shakespeare and Cervantes and Nabokov's Pnin)--takes it upon himself to go in Ash's place...with strange, unexpected, hilarious and excruciating results.
Fugue States is a spectacular novel, at once a parody of clueless tourism and western meddling in world affairs and a subtle, immensely affecting book about homesickness and the deep melancholy that abides in people who, like Ash and his father, and even like the foolish Matt, have never felt completely at home in the world.

Genres: Canada, Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

Published May 30, 2017

About the author

Pasha Malla was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and raised in London, Ontario. He attended Concordia University in Montreal as a graduate student.

His debut book, The Withdrawal Method, a collection of short stories, won the Trillium Book Award and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, as well as being shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. One of his short stories, "Filmsong", won an Arthur Ellis Award while another was published on Joyland, a hub for short fiction.

Snare Books released All Our Grandfathers Are Ghosts, a collection of poetry. His first novel, People Park, was published in 2012.

Malla is a frequent contributor to The Walrus.

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 2 out of 5]

What might he ask the author of this dreck? There were no revelations here, just manipulations and make-believe. The abyss was the guy's own creation, its battle-won wisdoms self-serving and contrived: it was no great trick to build up a hard man only for the tear-jerking purpose of making him fall. This wasn't a novel, Ash thought, blowing his nose softly into a napkin. It was a con.

I don't think that I, as a rule, like novels about novelists. And when this main character is unlikeable – with him protesting it unfair for readers to analyse his work and hold him to the opinions he has expressed on the page; with him being snide about the literary efforts of others (both the amateur and the bestselling); with him assuming that his interpretation of the world, as an artist, is superior to that of everyone else's – there's a danger of deciding that the author himself is unlikeable; that he's really writing about himself here. And while on the one hand, I get that Pasha Malla is likely purposefully, ironically, provoking me to this conclusion with Fugue States, on the other, it can't help but colour my opinion of him and this book. I didn't much like the experience.

Fugue States is a highly planned and structured work: Playing off both common senses of the word “fugue” (the disassociative mental state and the jarringly contrapuntal musical form), the plot starts and stops and repeats and changes. Another reviewer said that it reads more like a collection of short stories – with some sections more enjoyable than others, as in any such anthology – and I agree with that to a point; because I can see what Malla is trying to achieve with this disjointed format; the planning he put into shaking up the novel form in order to capture what was in his mind. In an interview, Malla says that this book is about “accepted scripts that exist – socially, culturally – in terms of not just masculinity, but racial and cultural identity for writers and artists, for relationships between men and women, for family relationships, for caregiving relationships. The book is really set around this idea that these kinds of expectations and scripts that exist are based in false narratives, or at least very reductive narratives.” That's a complicated theme, hung onto an ambitious framework, and while it may be highly literary and intellectualised (“esoteric” is the word the narrator uses to describe the kind of author he admires), it just doesn't make for a good reading experience. Malla can use a novelist-as-protagonist to ironically scorn the author-reader relationship, but if it was all going over this reader's head, then I can't call Fugue States a success.

A brief summary: Ash Dhar (the son of a Kashmiri immigrant man and the white hippy who once loved him) is a novelist and book-themed radio host whose father has recently, suddenly, died. Among his father's papers, Ash discovers an unfinished novel about a “hero's” journey along the famous Amarnath pilgrimage, and when Ash's oldest friend Matt (a ridiculous pothead womaniser; a white moron that Ash doesn't actually seem to like) suggests that they make the mountain trek themselves in honour of old Brij, Ash declines: he's not going to be some brown cliche, seeking his father in the abandoned homeland. When Matt goes to India anyway and gets into trouble, Ash finally makes his own kind of pilgrimage.

There were nice bits – I enjoyed everything about Chip and his disabled son, the final reminiscence about Ash and Brij's last day together was remarkable, there was a nice balance to discussion about the Troubles in Kashmir – but there were parts that irked me, too. In a novel about cultural identity, where Ash and Malla himself are both half-white and born and raised in Canada, I was turned off by the conclusion of the scene where Ash and a little boy meet at a hotel pool and the boy wants Ash to sing O Canada with him:

And they sang, and they sang. Ash with one eye on the exit should the kid's parents appear – should anyone appear – and find him here, belting out this ridiculous, nonsensical song, with everything he had, with all the fake, patriotic love in his heart.

How should I not be offended by that? It's like when Yann Martel declared Canada “the greatest hotel on Earth” as he accepted his Booker Prize; as though this rich and welcoming country is simply a vague idea to which it would be inappropriate to commit. (And how am I not surprised that the first approving link I found to that statement was from the Globe & Mail, where Malla used to work?) So, related: I had no idea how I was supposed to react to the deplorable Matt – he's constantly on drugs and alcohol, shaves his entire body, tries to “turn” a lesbian (but abandons her after a horrible scene), and his behaviour towards Ash becomes progressively more abusive and more incomprehensible (even as his vocabulary is spiked with “frigs” and “poops” and “goshdarns”; who is this guy?) – and then I found Malla's explanation in that same article above: I just imagined what would have happened in the situation if this absurd character, who believes himself to have agency in every situation, enacts this privilege that he is oblivious to. Ah, so that's the point: that's how to subvert accepted scripts and upend reductive narratives; nothing reductive about that.

Fugue States is obviously the result of a thoughtful design, imagination, and skill. Malla has plenty to say, but little of it reached me through the obfuscating layers of construction. It's no con, but I can't consider this an overall success.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of things are happening in this book.

First, I have to say that I loved the way the author wrote the french words Matt tried to say, like phonetics for the dumbs. The words sounded like the french ones, I was really surprised!

The story was good until the trip to Kashmir. Then it was chaos. I wish that we could have seen an end to this trip, that everything that happened would be explained in some way.

I received a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

[Tricia Dower · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, actually. I received this as part of a Goodreads giveaway and many thanks to Knopf Canada for that. I was quite excited because Pasha Malla is highly talented and it's been five years since his last book, the intriguing, experimental People Park. Having read his award-winning story collection and his two novels, I have to say I think Malla is more effective in the short form. Fugue States might have been better as a series of linked stories. The last chapter reads like a complete story and is beautiful -- Malla at his best. There are other moments of genius in the book. Malla creates a despicable character in Matt yet through a few well-placed glimpses into Matt's past forces the reader to feel some sympathy for him. A scene with a man who has a disabled son moved me to tears. The bits in India through the western viewpoints are revealing and often funny. Unfortunately the story wanders aimlessly, never quite coming together in a meaningful way. Too bad really. I wish I could say differently.

[Ameema S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars.

I'm an Indigo Employee, and I received an advanced readers copy of this book from Indigo Books and Music, in exchange for my honest feedback.

This book is very ~literary~ and honestly, I can picture the exact audience it will appeal to: Indian-Canadian dads or ~literary~ people.

It was mostly written okay, but not exactly enjoyable. Mostly, I felt like I was just suffering through an irritatingly introspective and unlikeable narrator, but at other moments one little line would surprise and delight me. It's kind of ironic, because I feel like this is the exact kind of book Ash would criticize (& hate).

Both Ash and Matt are unlikeable and I didn't connect with either of them (at all), which made this book even more difficult to like. It took about 2/3 of the book for the plot to pick up - and even then, I didn't care as much as I could have. Ash's storyline was more interesting to me than Matt's (he honestly just pissed me off). But Ash is a bit of a colder narrator, so everything felt a bit impersonal from his perspective.

Also, this is nitpicky, I know, but it's really weird that Matt - as a grown-ass adult, still uses 'friggin' and 'freaking' (instead of 'fuckin/g).

The memory twist at the end came from out of nowhere, and it felt unnecessary - like the author had a few different story ideas and he just wanted to throw them all together. Matt is absolutely a garbage human being and I hate him.

I didn't like this book, and I don't think I would recommend it either.

[Dessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this novel but I just couldn't manage it. The structure didn't seem to make any sense. The characters flirted with but ultimately failed to be sympathetic, complete with totally unnecessary and apparently instantly forgotten rape scene, sudden and inexplicably onset of amnesia, tired and sentimental flashbacks to happier times, etc. The inside cover implies the characters are aware of the ridiculousness of their self-imposed Quixotic quest to India in search of... history? Closure? But somehow they remain completely oblivious to how tired this trope is, while still acknowledging how desperate they must be to rely on it. I don't know, fam. I was hoping it would all come together in the end but it just doesn't. I'm sorry.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the heart of Fugue States is this borderline absurd brotherly love between two childhood friends. To me, the sections with Matt (a quintessential 'dude') worked the best; Malla could even have pushed some of Matt's memory-making exploits even further into absurdity and it would've worked. Ash on the other hand, reads more straightforward initially, and some of his scenes (I'm thinking of the creative writing workshop in particular) border on stereotype. This book is almost freaking great -- I've already forced it on my husband so we can chat about it -- but settles for flawed but very good.

I won a copy of this book from Goodreads Giveaways.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Fugue States” which I won through Goodreads Giveaways is a unique and touching story that opens when Ash Dhar, a book-themed radio-show host and aspiring writer after the funeral of his father Brij, a Kashmir-born doctor discovers an unfinished manuscript among his father’s belongings. Despondent, his emotional state capricious, and filled with memories of a father who was caught between the reality of his life in Canada and his past in Kashmir, Ash begins to copy the work of fiction that has no ending and deals with a “hero's” pilgrimage to the famous Amarnath cave, a holy Hindu shrine.

When his obnoxious, self-absorbed, pothead and womanizing friend Matt suggests a visit to the beautiful but war-torn land, Ash refuses at first until a desperate call from India lures him into the country. Awaiting his trial after a dire ordeal caused an outburst of temper that hurt a boy, Matt suggests a three-day trip to Scrinagar where he and Ash can not only ski but take his father’s ashes to the Amarnath cave. When they arrive Ash's mental health already plagued with grief as well as struggling with his cultural identity suddenly takes a further turn when he experiences a fugue state, suffering memory and a loss of his unique personality traits.

Set mainly in Canada there is an awareness and historical significance that permeates the novel with the beauty of Kashmir, a country scarred by political upheaval, brutality and violence resulting from territorial conflicts between 1947- 1999. In Ash’s memories of his father Brij you sense a longing for his homeland juxtaposed against the reality of his life in Canada that has left him a adrift for years, affecting his family relationships and creating a cultural identity crisis in Ash.

Unique in structure the plot doesn’t flow smoothly but is rather sporadic as Ash deals with a job problem, family relationships and interactions with friends like Sherene and Chip before tension begins escalating near the end as he’s forced to go to India when his friend Matt gets into trouble. Even the ending left me hanging as there wasn’t any resolution to anything except maybe the restoration of Ash’s job but perhaps this is what Pasha Malla intended; to emulate real life.

However, the characters are believable and very complex, bringing life to the Ash’s world. Ash Dhar is sarcastic, astute and witty although he seems susceptible and even insecure when it comes to handling a bully like Matt. His emotional stability topsy-turvy with the loss of his father, Ash must come to turns with his grief before he can deal with the uproar in his sister’s marriage, his mother and stepfather’s bohemian lifestyle and the challenges his friend Chip faces with his disabled son although he tries to give each one as much support and encouragement as he can. In retrospect Matt is his polar – opposite; a thoughtless dolt who has no tact, shaves his body and makes uncouth noises to get attention. A weed smoking womanizer, he’s a self-centered, hedonistic and demanding brute with a temper. With a mother who committed suicide and no other family Matt’s a pariah who yearns to be liked. He’s constantly on the prowl to make memories at others expense as well as adopting Ash’s family as his own. Often, it’s his bumbling antics and the banter between Matt and Ash that brings a dash of humor to the story.

Yet although I can’t say I thoroughly enjoyed “Fugue States” it is imaginative, original, and designed to stimulate a reaction in its readers which it does to perfection.

[Trevor Pearson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Received a copy of Fugue States by Pasha Malla through the GoodReads First Reads Giveaway program in exchange for an honest review

The winter season in Canada can be different from one year to the next, but one way or another it is almost always unrelenting; very rarely do we get a free pass. One year it could be mild with plenty of snow, slushy paint legs, and periods of flooding that transform over night into deadly sheets of ice. Other years it could be relatively dry with low pressure but extremely cold made complete with the dreaded polar vortexes that can make your nostrils freeze together upon inhalation. Forget the environmental circumstances, In Ash Dhar's case the winter of his father's death was just the tipping point for the tumult that would come in his personal life.

Ash Dhar is a writer who published his first book ten years prior which was released to moderate acclaim. He's been having difficulty engineering enough substance to release his second novel which is anticipated by friends, family and some book club members. For Ash writing was a mere snapshot of a time in his life, it may have been him at the time, but it wasn't him now nor a way to understand him. People change and he wanted everyone within earshot to know, but who he is at this moment in time has prohibited him from taking the next step in his writing process. Ash is a thirty-something who has become a radio host, who in life like his career doesn't go off script, he interviews other authors as he bides his time until he can get back to writing his own stories. He lives in Toronto and finds himself travelling to rural Quebec for the funeral of his Kashmir born father. A normally eloquent man Ash follows his sister's eulogy and ends up delivering a heartfelt speech but something strange happened that made time move slow and the brain momentarily ceased operation. He became disconnected from himself, separated from his senses, failing to understand who he was and what he was doing. As the formalities of funerals occurs Ash distances himself from the handshakes and mourners and heads to his father's room to decipher trash from treasure. What he finds is a work of creation that will force the harmless Hindu to travel back in time and inhabit a mind space where he was far less cynical, more adventurous, and not so much like his father.

"Eventually, back on the sidewalk in Montreal, Ash had returned to the flow of pedestrians. Swept along, he thought about time: it's passing, its irrevocability. And longed not for his father to be alive - impossible - but simply to revisit that moment before remembering he was gone. The old chestnut: one second a person was here and the next, not. An absence both swift and massive. 'Passed away' or 'deceased' felt too delicate. More conclusive, more honest, was the abrupt, fatal thud of dead."

Back doing the ceremonial duties required of a grieving son an unexpected visitor from Ash's past shows up to pay his respects. Matt was Ash's childhood friend, a guy that always tried to make himself happen by indulging in recreational drugs, public drunkenness, sexual activities and violence which was caused in large part by all of the reasons mentioned before. Matt was like a Tasmanian Devil, a free spirited guy who left destruction wherever he went and may be like the Looney Toon himself, incomprehensible at times but he was always searching for his path to eternal happiness. Matt has had many jobs on his resume but was never much of a professional, with all of his bad habits he failed to keep a job and like his relationships tended to be more of the short term variety. If one thing was certain about Matt it's that he made lasting memories wherever he found himself, and back home with a crusty curmudgeon and down and out Ash, he would be put to the ultimate test.

"This feeling was familiar: an instantaneous mistake followed by the careening reality of time. All it took was a fraction of a second - the window smashed, the condom forgone, the pill popped, the biker mocked, the cop mooned - and whatever misstep receded unalterably into the past. With the body heaped at his feet, Matt again sensed his life diverging closer to the clifftop - to the void, to the end."

Unbeknownst to Ash, his father had been writing a tale of fiction that wouldn't get discovered until after his death. The story was about a man's journey up the Himalayas to Amaranath and achieving his own glory, a spiritual awakening after completing a monumental quest. The curious part was that there was no ending, it was as if Brij was hoping his son would find it and motivate him to draw a conclusion, or perhaps take the lead in the story himself. Amaranath is a cave regarded as a Hindu shrine located in Kashmir, India and near Brij Dhar's home town of Srinigar. It is known by Indians as one of the holiest physical representations of Hinduism and a pilgrimage up the Himalayas that must be endured to achieve eternal life. The mountainous terrain is difficult in itself, throw in the elements of snow and the terrorist threat with the amount of devotees that sojourn every year, the potential for danger is high and injury is most likely. The goal is to get inside the cave in order to witness with their own eyes a religious symbol of life from the Hindu God Shiva, but the quest is what makes the destination so worthwhile.

Delhi is the hub of the Indian wheel and is responsible for its economic development and many of the country's vital implementations. On the surface Delhi is a beautiful city with all the colour, picturesque settings and effervescence; but if you look closer there's a little dirt under the fingernails, the extensive heat brings out the worst of the lowest common denominator of its population and the overwhelming crowds can bring out the worst in its normally tolerant natives. Brij loved his village but he hated the trips from Canada to Srinigar because he knew it required a stop to visit his family who ended up in Delhi. Brij was a lot happier and more comfortable in a place with people like him. It was nothing against his adopted home land of Canada, he could be anywhere in the world not named Srinigar and he would have some sort of complaint, Brij held contempt for every place that wasn't home.

Fugue States by Pasha Malla is an interesting read that comes across like a buddy-buddy comedy from the movies with two people that have a history. but now are at opposite ends of the personality landscape. Another quirk is that they can't get away from one another because one doesn't have the guts to say what he truly feels and the other is completely oblivious to others feelings preferring to live in his own little world. Beyond the sophomoric humour there is a deeper commentary on the difficulty to achieve masculinity from a contemporary mindset, even feeling threatened by the idea of it, and the ability to learn about yourself during a time of existential crisis. Between father and son there was a battle with traditions and in a more modern time when they don't seem to matter much more it makes holding on to them that much more important even if it comes at a price. The lasting impression for me was to not let your feelings go unheard, let people know how you feel about them because you never know when someone's time is up.

"So why wasn't this the case, now, with his condo? Ash stood sniffing in the doorway, but nothing came back: not cookery nor body odour nor laundry nor garbage nor even some fecal reek lingering in the pipes. The air wasn't even sterile. Instead this was pure absence. The place smelled of nothing. Ash had worried since moving in that the building, a converted factory, was a nothing sort of place, its past reduced to aesthetic flourishes: exposed brick and plumbing and lofty ceiling's from which dangled chrome light fixtures with affectation of industry."

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an experience! Humour throughout left me laughing at times while wondering if that was the author's intent. Fugue States honestly felt like an epic adventure for the reader!

[Mark Lisac · Rating 3 out of 5]

The nicely structured (overall, on balance, I think) story and and obviously talented writing drag this one into 3-star territory because I've been generous in giving worse books 3 stars. The screeching changes of tone in the last 50 pages detracted from the overall effort. So did the non sequiturs like the briefly glimpsed and then disappeared drama of the life of Chip, a friend of the main character Ash. And so, repeatedly, did the over-the-top actions of Ash's friend Matt. Many of his scenes brought to mind the desperate attempts at humour in gross comedy movies of the last 20 years and in the occasional Coen brothers film. As with those movies, the similar scenes in Malla's book tend toward unnecessary coarseness and lead to the question of why the writer can't find a way to be genuinely funny rather than just trying to plunge into endless ephemeral bad taste. Some themes appear to run through the novel but are overwhelmed by the general detritus surrounding them.
The book ends up as a rare case — a novel that convinces me the author is quite talented, and may have some interesting or possibly even important things to say, but one that also persuades me not to look up any more of his work without a really really good reason. (I guess that actually makes it 2.5 stars if there weren't some grade curving going on.)

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer: Thank you for a copy of this title to NetGalley, BookNet, and Alfred A. Knopf in exchange for a fair review.

I don't know what to say about Fugue States. The story does embody the meaning of "fugue states", but I don't find it an easy book to like.
The main character, Ash, and his friend. Matt, are truly flawed individuals (aren't we all?), but also extremely unloveable, even unlikeable.
I had a very hard time with what I perceived to be misogyny (on Matt's part, always trying to score). But fair enough, he provided a great foil to Ash.

I really only came to understand where the narrative was going in the last five or six chapters.
There, I understood the fugue state of the first and second generation immigrant, the fugue state of someone like Matt, who kind of "loved" everyone, yet loved no one.
In time, I may come to see my rating as too low. This book is one to think about, even re-read.

[Gina Racioppo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

While I agree with other reviewers who felt that this book was a little disjointed and meandering, I enjoyed it for those reasons. This is my first book by this author, and his background in short story writing is pretty obvious. This book is written in distinct chunks that would stand on their own as short stories.

Malla writes with excellent humour; some of the dialogue between Ash and his sister Mona feels like the natural, jokey way that one speaks with a sibling.

The ending was beautiful but also very abrupt. It will take some time for me to digest (and I will update the review when I do).

If you like books with a clean, narrative arc this probably isn't for you. But if you enjoy a meandering read, I recommend it.

[Deepa Rajagopalan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard Pasha Malla read a short story this summer and laughed till my stomach hurt. I ordered this book right away and absolutely loved it.
Easily, one of the best books I read this year, it was ridiculously funny and deeply moving. I thought the pacing was great and the two main POVs were so specific, so unique. His choice of words and phrases are clever, conveying exactly what he wants to say. The questions of belonging that are asked here are universal, yet felt deeply personal.
My favourite scene from the book is when Ash and Mona are reminiscing over their childhood Christmas. There's so much tenderness in Mona's questions and Ash's response (what he does not say, mostly).
Don't miss this book!

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty certain Owen Wilson will have the part of Matt sewn up in the movie version of Fugue; the ear worm of him tormenting poor Ash kept me awake long after the Kobo dimmed and died this last week. In spite of my eagerness to save the protagonist from himself or rather my eagerness to have Malla save him for me, I was enchanted by the story, the characters, the prose. I suspect Hollywood would cater to my desire to leave Owen frozen in the cave at the top of the mountain while Ash and Sherene kayak into the sunset; alas I will concede the author's right to end a fugue with sounds rather than answers, with mystery rather than mush.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second best book on Kashmir that I am reading right now.
Hmmm... starts off as a family comedy, then morphs into a laddish kind of picaresque, and then into something dark and strange -- disturbing but not in a good way. I get it that this is a fugue, but I still feel that it needs some kind of consistent theme. It just feels that the moral compass is a little off, and that this book is not quite smart or well-written enough to deal with that.
Plus Ash reminds me a little too much of a recently-departed CBC Radio host for me to warm to the characterm

[Chris Devine · Rating 2 out of 5]

My god, what a stupid ending. The first two parts of the book were alright, but then the last part just delved into the ridiculous. I don't think the author knew how to end the book, so he just didn't. He just took the characters into stupid directions and it left me wondering what the hell happened. Read the first two parts, and then make up your own ending, you'll enjoy it much more.

I won this from a goodreads giveaway.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the character of Ash, the son and main character in this book. We are introduced to him at his father's funeral, and he is not quite sure how to feel and how to express his confusion. He also experiences a fugue state, and the manipulations of his "friend" Matt were horrifying to me. This was an interesting book, unpredictable, and sometimes uncomfortable. A solid meditation on grief, emotion, and human blundering.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable read. If Fugue States’s finale is at all satisfying it certainly isn’t because it resolves any of the conflicts in Ash’s early midlife crisis. It’s because circumstances give him an opportunity to remember who he is in terms of lineage: a flawed man who once had a flawed father, still has a flawed friend, and is drifting through a flawed, if very funny, novel.

[Stevie Peters · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tried to tell too many stories at once but none of them felt like they came to an end. There were a few nice moments but everything was so scattered. The end was frustrating because of the sheer amount of unusual things the author tried to wedge in. It started well and just went on a chaotic journey. Even if that was the intention, it wasn’t well executed.

[Katherine Krige · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read. Definitely fugue; not sure what's a dream or reality. I look forward to hearing what my book club thinks of this book when we discuss it. Until then, I will just appreciate the fine prose and amusing anecdotes scattered throughout the book.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was enjoying this book until Ash and Matt arrived in Kashmir, the story just went strange at that point and at times disturbing. I felt there was no proper ending and was disappointed.

I won this book in a giveaway and was looking forward to reading it but it wasn’t what I expected.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stopped reading at page 62. Did not care what happened to the characters and decided to cut my losses. It started off being one I had wanted to read, liked the main character but I just didn't get why he could hang around with Matt. In the end, Matt drove me away.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

funny crazy self indulgent ending goes totally off in a different direction (is there an ending?)

[Dayna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a goodreads win and I think this book was just ok. It had it's funny parts, but at times I felt almost lost and wondering if I missed something.

[Mystic Faerie ✨️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I will be looking for more of his stuff to read in the future.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any average story line some hard to believe. Author tends to ramble on at times and story line somewhat disjointed at times.

[Catherine Milmine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Won this book from Goodreads, started off ok but the ending was just too confusing to me. Just left me wondering.

[Thea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horribly truncated. Many ideas show potential but crashed and burned or worse... forgotten. Title stunningly apt in the worst way possible. Would not wish this book on my worst nemesis.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5*