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Linear, traditional plot is not exactly a priority in the novel, so the impact of spoilers should be minimal, but if you are particularly concerned about spoilers, you may prefer to comment only in the appropriate 'general comments' section until you've finished the whole book.

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Page 240: 'And she remembered too her mother's fits, when she screamed for no reason and tore her hair, and the fight with her father, whom she didn't remember at all because he died young, and she remembered the noose her mother was rescued from, a noose made from a dupatta that had been fastened to a nail on the kitchen wall. Or was it Mr Lee's mother who was rescued from a noose? Had she stolen the memory? Perhaps she had no memories at all; perhaps she was stealing other people's because she had none of her own.'

Narcopolis branches away from the main story with stories within stories and divergences. It leaves loose ends hanging and picks up on earlier threads having skipped swathes of events between. It switches viewpoint and tells the story from the point of view of the pipe, is omniscient about things that Dom could not know, and often leaves us unsure about exactly where, when and how we are viewing events.

The overall effect could be viewed as mirroring content in from, giving the reader a taste of the journey that addicts and users undertake, and the fragmented and contradictory trains of thought and consciousness they perceive. Did you get any such feeling? How did these effects work for you?

Some of the tales within a tale and other divergences I found slightly confusing and mildly irritating - at the time. But by the time I'd finished the book I was ready to go back and start again - to make quite sure I'd not missed anything.

I've never used any of these drugs so I can only take it on trust that this is how it feels. For the most part it felt believable, albeit that it felt like magic-realism writ large most of the time (!) So, yes it worked.

The most tedious part of the book, for me, was Mr. Lee's back-story, which was probably the longest section of straightforward sustained narrative in the whole book. This had less to do with what was being said than to do with the way in which it was told. Maybe that was the point?

I didn't mind the non-linear narrative or the lack of a uni-directional plot. What bothered me was that the vignettes revealed nothing to me I didn't know - which I see as a flaw in the sense that though it portrayed Bombay very well, it hardly stepped out of its realm to examine issues surrounding its main premises, issues that had much to do with all that drug/prostitution/exploitation culture.

I found the characters to be mere caricatures, lacking depth. Often I felt I was reading the book-version of the movie 'Slum-dog Millionaire' - a movie that apparently had no aim apart from displaying its poverty, cruelty, filth and underworld to vicarious foreigners, but apart from that, having little value as literature.

I thought he was attempting to write like Rushdie - a mixture of cultural irreverence and political sarcasm delivered with a careless flourish that shocks the reader, all the while being bluntly truthful. But nor did the supposedly sharp knife slash through my sensitivity, nor did it its soft edges give a worthwhile result.

Too many ruminations that had nothing to do either with Bombay, that were not poignant as observations into a city or a culture or its time-frame. The period he has chosen is such a vast one, with many important political events taking place that had both local and national consequences, and all the while, he simply eschewed them all, as if they didn't matter - if they had been involved, well, the work would have been far richer.

I was really disappointed. Especially because the first sentence of the novel, that goes on for 7 pages, had really perked up my expectations.