Almost 5 stars 🌟

I was soo ready to give this 5 stars until the ending. confusing 😕

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Good Not Great

I am one of the Ugandan Asians that came here to the UK in 1972 when i was only a child. Books like this intrigue me as I am hoping to understand the true history of what happened and what my parents went through to come here. There are many similarities to the family in this story, but I felt that there was too much jumping around and not a robust telling of the story.

There were opportunities to expand and areas that were unnecessary to the story - little things that didn’t give any gravitas to anything.

Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed the story to a point but was just disappointed with elements introduced and not followed through fully. However the final couple of chapters I found very lazily written. A real shame.

What really annoyed me though on my audible was the quality of the recording (which I have flagged to audible). The narrators seem to have recorded at two different levels that either deafened me or i had to turn the volume up to high just to hear (not to mention the occasional coughing by the elder narrator).

The younger narrator wasn’t great at the pronouncing of the Gujarati words which I find annoying as I feel that they could have found a narrator who could maybe speak Gujarati! But again it wasn’t a major distraction. Not like the sound levels...gggrrrrrrrr!!!!

I would recommend the book but the mediocre scoring are my niggles. As I say, it was good but could have been great.

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1 person found this helpful

Fantastic story great performances

I loved this story and thoroughly enjoyed the audio book. Only issues were with volume differences between the recordings of the two narrators - a bit annoying.

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Great book

Loved it. It’s rare to be grabbed from the beginning but I really was. I will be thinking about it for a while, I know.

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Enjoyable

I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I really enjoyed the prose, character development and the storyline. Really good work from both narrators. Looking forward to reading more from this author.

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An insightful novel.

I did not have an issue with the different volume of two narrators. The narrator who read the part of the grandfather was excellent. The story is an insight into social history that we would not get from history books. An enjoyable novel.

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Book brilliant, narration brilliant, issue with so

This book is brilliant and handles issues of racial tension with subtlety. The only issue is that the two narrators recordings are at very different volumes, meaning that as it switches between chapters you can't hear Hassan even on full volume and then get your ear blasted off by Samir. It's a shame, as both narrators do a great job, it's just whoever mixed/produced it that has messed up.

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6 people found this helpful

Brilliant Story (not well-edited)

The story is such a difficult and brilliant one on what does it mean to say you are African in a post-colonial context. And the politics of the continues impact of British colonialism on our countries while you continue to just want to live, fall in love, be happy. There were moments I had to question my own bias as a Black African and good story-telling should make you question & self-reflect.

The book was so badly edited unfortunately. No fault on the readers who read very well but the volume was all over the place and several glitchy moments. Not great on the sound editors and a pity. I pushed through only cause of the story.

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1 person found this helpful

OK, nothing too incredible.

This was well written, but nothing too amazing. I'm not sure about the huge hype. But that seems normal these days.
This is enjoyable, and the readers are good. I particularly liked the younger character, who is, as the contemporary protagonist, more sympathetic.
The story was a bit dull, but the experience of non white people anywhere is always important to be heard and thought about. There are some important racism issues discussed here.
As a novel, I was not blown away, but it gave me some food for thought.

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Great story but quality of recording seriously lacking

I enjoyed this book very much,having first heard an abbreviated version on BBC Sounds. However the sound quality is very poor. Two different performers, both good but recorded at different levels so that you have to keep turning the sound up and down. This needs to be re-recorded and those who have bought it supplied with a replacement copy.

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