I’m avoiding Sea of Poppies at present as I think it’s still only available in hardback, plus I have a morbid fear of authors dying just after completing book two and thus leaving me adrift without literary closure (to use an Americanism for which there is no direct British equivalent).

I think Ghosh’s prose style is excellent. On that regard, it might be the best written work up for the Booker. As far as being precise, however, I’ve recently been reading a lot of Philip Roth and just recently Richard Yates – compared to them, Ghosh is quite abstract, going for feel rather than precision. But I think that compared to other Victorian-esque novels, Ghosh’s prose style was precise, even if like them it is not overly concise.

As far as page count goes, it actually took me a while to get into the book. A lot of that time is spent getting to know characters, though, so it isn’t awful. I think that given the objectives of the book, it’s page count is justified. And it looks, honestly, like Ghosh has enough control over things to make the trilogy worth its page count too. What I mean by that is that he gave no indication that by the time book three comes around he’ll need 1000+ pages to wrap it all up.

I do agree with Kevin’s comment on the trilogy point, at this stage it’s not actually a completed work, it’s one panel of a tryptch. Until we have the full trilogy and can judge it in the round we can’t say anything definitive about it (particularly not me, given I’ve not read it yet). If the final novel of the three is poor, inevitably in a work of this nature that would call into question the value of reading the first two.

A couple of small follow-up queries:

Victorian-style novels, being generally so packed with incident, can sometimes get away with less precise prose than a smaller and less packed work might be able to. I note though you compare it favourably with the Unsworth on that regard, how would you rate Ghosh as a prose stylist overall?

Also, this is quite a large work as I recall, in terms of pagecount. Is that space justified and necessary? Is it large due to ambition and scope, or due to fat that could use trimming?

I think that you gave this book a fair chance

I’m not 100% sure that this one stands well enough on its own to garner a Booker Prize, though. I had the same problem with The Ghost Road, which I read before the others in the trilogy.

As for The Northern Clemency…

John, I’ll be referring people to your site and to dovegreyreader’s to see contrasting reviews from two people who actually finished the book!