Quarterlife A novel

In 2014, India had a choice between "weak governance and fascism," according to a character in Rege's impressive debut. The values on the line fueled many a heated discussion, a brilliant example of which plays out as one of the highlights of the narrative. The novel's roster of characters is diverse: Naren Agashe, a young executive returning to India after a decade in the States; Amanda, an American looking to reboot her perspective through NGO work; Rohit, Naren's unpredictable younger brother, whose filmmaking pursuit brings him in the orbit of Omkar, a small-town moviemaker associated with radical politics. Also in the Agashe orbit are friends Irfa, a Muslim woman, and a young gay couple. Although, at times, these choices can feel like tokenism, and even at its most intense, there's a bit of a remove from the characters, Rege succeeds brilliantly in fleshing out the millennials' motivations through their gradually evolving story arcs. Given the political and social turmoil in the country, this novel is vital, a marker of an important moment in its storied history as Rege expertly captures the zeitgeist of the new India through a "variety of irreconcilable yet interdependent perspectives."

Rege debuts with an intelligent if overlong meditation on the rise of Indian nationalism in 2014. Naren Agashe, a thriving Wall Street consultant, returns home to Mumbai after eight years in the U.S., despite having recently secured a green card. He believes the future lies in India, thanks to promises from the Hindu nationalist Bharat Party to end corruption and deliver jobs. Accompanying Naren is a college acquaintance, Amanda, who's set to teach in a Muslim-majority slum. In Mumbai, Amanda becomes involved in a "situationship" with Naren's younger brother, Rohit, a charming filmmaker. As Amanda contends with culture shock and India's income inequity, she's bothered by Rohit's inability to acknowledge his privilege. Then Rohit befriends Omkar, a Bharat supporter, and despite disapproval from many of his friends, he agrees to produce Omkar's film on Ganeshotsav, a festival notorious for sparking tension and violence between Hindus and Muslims. Rege gamely tackles India's caste system and the elites' blasé response to the rising threat to minorities under the Bharat Party, though her tendency to deliver ideas via lengthy dialogue can make the characters feel wooden. Still, she pulls off some beautiful and kaleidoscopic set pieces, such as her depiction of Ganeshotsav. Readers will want to keep an eye out for what Rege does next. Agent: Maria Cardona Serra, Aevitas Creative Management. (Sept.)

An ambitious, unusual, formally risky novel that attempts nothing less than a full-scale portrait of India circa 2014. The book begins with three principals: Naren, a hard-charging management consultant who, in the opening scene, decides to leave the U.S. and return home to an India undergoing both rapid development and a surge of Hindu nationalism; Amanda, Naren's white American college friend, who (in part to extricate herself from a romance that's soured) accepts a teaching fellowship in a Muslim-majority slum; and Naren's younger brother, Rohit, a filmmaker with whom Amanda gets involved. About a quarter of the way through, it opens out into something odder and more ambitious, incorporating many more characters, a more panoptic view of India on the cusp of becoming a world power. The book's nearest American analogue is probably Tom Wolfe and his "social x-ray" novels: sprawling, multivocal, rococo in style, bristling at every seam with big ideas. The good news is that Rege is a talented young writer, finely attuned to the psychology of her characters. The less good news: Despite some compelling characterization (for example, Kedar, Rohit and Naren's cousin, a reckless journalistic firebrand, and Omkar, an angry young nationalist filmmaker), the novel can feel chaotic--there are so many people that no one feels quite fully inhabited, and the book flits quickly on to the next. (Wolfe called his method "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast," and here Rege ups the number of feet to three billion or so.) The characters can sometimes feel, too, like types or mouthpieces, a suspicion that's encouraged by Rege's decision, at the end, to introduce the first-person voice of the novelist. Overstuffed, yes, occasionally bewildering, yes--but a lot of that reflects, persuasively, the author's sense of India's exciting, fractious, sometimes dangerous profusion of factions and energies. A promising first outing by a skilled writer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.