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How the novel’s changing forms shape the story
The narrative moves among forms including history, myth, fable and fairytale. That movement is not simply a change in storytelling style: Mehta has described it as a way to hold deliberate record-keeping alongside less legible kinds of knowing.
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The book began with an image of two people wandering a Tower of Babel in search of a god machine. In the course of writing, the tower became the whale of Babel, and the original image changed rather than remaining a fixed blueprint. Mehta has described the process as listening to a character’s story and revising it. The image offers context for the novel’s shifting structures, not a literal synopsis of its plot.
Mehta says earlier drafts leaned toward a logically organized world, categorized magic and familiar fantasy conventions. That order felt too fixed for this story. The finished novel lets its shape change, making mystery part of its method.
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What “opaque magic” means here
The magic is not explained as a complete system with rules that characters and readers can consult. Mehta has said, “It felt silly to pretend that magic in an alternate universe would have its rules known, categorized, and understood by everyone.” Her point is about the limits of knowledge: people living in a world do not necessarily understand all of its workings.
That opacity does not mean events are arbitrary. Mehta describes mysterious occurrences as having causes seeded in the past, with consequences unfolding in the present. The connections may not be neatly legible to characters or readers, but the novel’s uncertainty is different from a claim that nothing has an underlying cause.
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Why the emotional throughline matters
Sisterhood and family provide a human point of orientation as the narrative changes form. A review describes two pairs of sisters whose lives intersect through shared histories and memories. Their relationships give the novel continuity even when its storytelling resists a single, straightforward mode.
Mehta has said, “I think sibling relationships are a bottomless fountain for me that I can always go back to.” That interest helps explain why family is more than a theme layered onto the formal experiment: relationships are one of the ways the book makes its shifting accounts matter to the reader.
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Mehta also describes two kinds of knowing that the novel brings together: recorded, intellectual knowledge—books and deliberate remembrance—and instinctive or opaque knowledge associated with the body, dreams and intuition. As she puts it, “Both forms of knowing felt vital: these desperate scribblings we make to try and hold on to the largess, and the opaque and unknown ways in which the largess becomes known to us, in glimpses, out of the corner of our eye, always too big to hold, understand, or look at directly.”
What to expect as a reader
The book asks for attention to shifts in form and connections across stories rather than promising a quick explanation of every mystery. Mehta has described the craft challenge as pushing reality and language while keeping readers emotionally anchored. Sisterhood, memory and consequence are useful threads to follow when the structure becomes less familiar.
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That approach will not feel effortless to everyone. One reviewer called the novel lovely while also finding the abundance of nested stories potentially overwhelming. That is an individual response, not a universal verdict; readers who want a fully mapped magic system or a single linear narrative may find the book less accommodating than those drawn to formal experimentation.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Edition information
A DAW Books edition is listed under ISBN 9780756420062. Retail availability, format and price can vary by marketplace, so check the specific edition and seller before ordering.
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