Book Review: Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra - Page 3

It’s also a true-to-life complexity reflecting, as Chandra declares in an interview, the author’s emphasis on “the grey areas between ‘good’ and ‘bad’” and his interest in “the incidentals, in the texture and mood that is revealed when somebody is narrating his or her own life as they see it. Often the lies they tell us are as revealing as the truths they are willing to reveal to you.”

In regards to characterization, Chandra also perceives the intriguing and often paradoxical Sartaj Singh, the detective who first made an appearance in one of Love and Longing’s stories, in such an extensively dimensional fashion, as a vehicle for further exploration and insight. “He’s cynical and reflective and yet hopeful,” the author says, “And a policeman is an interesting protagonist; he allows you to move across a culture sideways and vertically.”

Such novelistic latitude and attention to detail is not only employed to flesh out the warts-and-all characterization of Sartaj and the not-all-warts depiction of Gaitonde. While the conscientious care Chandra takes in Sacred Games may be business as usual in the aim to explicate the complexities of the main characters — the poignancy of the once-dashing Sartaj’s regrets and sense of lost opportunities is effectively conveyed — it is more unusual for that same craftsmanship to be applied to the many secondary characters. Going beyond any shorthand stereotyping or safe-target caricatures, Chandra presents, for example, an ultimately sympathetic portrayal of an affluent, pampered wife cheating on her husband. And the outward animosity displayed toward Sartaj by the son of his slain partner is unflinching, Sartaj's rumination unsparing.

Not that Chandra — with the resonance and elegance and, at times, economy of his writing — needs to belabor or expend too many words to put across the full vulnerability and humanity of his characters, and the challenges of the lives they lead. At one point, Sartaj thinks about “how uncanny an animal this life was, that you had to seize it and let go of it at the same time, that you had to enjoy it but also plan, live every minute and die every moment.”

Actions may speak louder from time to time, but Chandra’s words cut to the heart of many matters as they, too, “get things right.”

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for the San Diego Union Tribune. For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores. Email him and he'll stop talking in the third-person.
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