Choice

February 5, 2024
Mukherjee (The Lives of Others) offers a diffuse novel in three parts, each tangentially linked by their protagonists’ negotiation of moral quandaries. The first section portrays London book editor Ayush as his depression pushes him toward a mental breakdown. He shows his five-year-old twins a video of pigs being slaughtered in lieu of a bedtime story, having gotten the idea they should know where meat comes from. The second section comprises a story by one of Ayush’s authors, about a bored academic named Emily, whose London ride share driver gets in an accident. The details are fuzzy to Emily, but she’s concerned she was involved in a hit-and-run. She tracks down the driver, but after learning he’s an Eritrean refugee, she has second thoughts about reporting the incident. The third section, set in rural India, is based on an anecdote Anush hears at a party about the gift of a cow to a poor family, which inadvertently sets into motion a series of events that leaves the family in ruin. Rote ruminations about the shortcomings of contemporary publishing and academia bog things down, and while Mukherjee exhaustively explores the gray areas inhabited by his characters, the three narratives don’t quite hang together. This doesn’t reach the heights of the author’s previous work.