Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid

ISBN: 9780241979068
Amazon ID: B01LXKLSQ0

This is an ideal book to take if you plan to get marooned on a desert island.

It's the only place I can think of where you'll be so bored that you decide to finish reading the book.

I managed to get 30% of the way through (3 chapters out of 12, page 40 of 137) before deciding that if a book hasn't got a story to it, and nothing of any interest has happened, by that stage, I'm not going to waste any more of my time waiting to see whether the author had something worthwhile in mind.

We know the names of the two main characters. We don't know where they are (they're in a city, and it seems like the middle east, but we don't know). Three scenes have been described about other people in other (identified) places, which have nothing whatever to do with the people we're reading about, and make no sense at all, being described in such isolation.

Even from the first page, the writing style is dull, uninspiring, giving you the feeling that the story has nothing to it. The further you go on, the more this becomes apparent.

There are many meaningless or even contradictory phrases in the writing:

• "In the drawer of the bedside table were … a few paper-wrapped sticks of unchewed chewing gum."
  • How often would you expect to find paper-wrapped sticks of chewed chewing gum? How do you even get that in sticks anyway??
• "His eyes rolled terribly. Yes: terribly. Or perhaps not so terribly."
  • Oh, for goodness' sake, make your mind up!
• "[The flat] had been partitioned from a much larger flat and comprised three rooms: two modest bedrooms and a third chamber they used for sitting, dining, entertaining and watching television."
  • So, no toilet, shower, bath or kitchen then…
• "Now there were two Filipina girls, in their late teens, neither probably yet twenty…"
  • Well, if they're in their late teens, of course they aren't yet twenty!

There's also rather more gratuitous swearing than I find pleasant.

All in all I don't have the time to waste reading stuff like this when there are good books around; I haven't even put it on my list of "books to come back to in case I feel like having another go at finishing them".

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