The Body by the Shore by Tabish Khair

The Body by the Shore Reviews

• 
  SignesBookCorner

  It’s not great but not bad. I liked all the Danish references, not so much all the science. Interesting story but I wish fewer characters were involved and that there was more action than background story telling.
• 
  Alex Brown

  Utterly inconsequential
• 
  Seb

  Terrific and relevant political thriller where climate change, global health issues and racism are at the center of the intrigue. Supported by a cast of credible and interesting characters, Tabish Khair masterfully unfolds a labyrinthine plot that will fully satisfy the most demanding reader. Absolutely recommended.
  
  PS: it would make an excellent movie too...
• 
  Cecilie

  Solid mystery.
• 
  Mohit Rathore

  It's difficult to put it into a single genre! It is of Science Fiction, Crime Mystery and Thriller genres.
  
  ⏳ The story is told through the eyes of three central characters: a retired Danish police officer, a young Caribbean housekeeper, and a former covert operations mercenary, each of whom approaches the novel's central mystery from a different perspective.
  
  ⏳ Switching from one narrative thread to another cleverly builds up the information available to readers, but it also disguises and hides things, much like the swirling North Sea waters around the decrepit oil rig.
  
  ⏳ The Body By The Shore has a Scandi-noir vibe (Scandi noir, is a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view) thanks to Jens Erik's Danish location and sensibilities, while the science fiction aspect felt like a Black Mirror storyline, albeit one told in much greater depth than an hour-long tv show can achieve.
  
  ⏳ The author - Khair - has a lot to say about modern racism, how our behaviours are shaped without our knowledge or consent, and how wealth disparities are fueling increased unrest around the world. His blend of murder mystery and social commentary is great in the book. I don't have the expertise to comment on the scientific aspects of The Body By The Shore, but the sociological observations felt so accurate that I was never dragged away from the novel's atmosphere by doubts about its veracity. In fact, I could easily accept the premise of The Body By The Shore as true in the real world!
  
  ⏳ However, the first few chapters of the book were unable to bind me to the book, and I had to force myself to bind myself to the book. That could have been improved. This is not for beginners who want to try this genre; they will struggle to finish it and will conclude that this genre is not for them.
• 
  Ekta M

  ~~If microbes were to be eliminated from earth, many infectious diseases would disappear. But much of life would disappear too. Slowly we would perish. Painfully.~~
  
  
  Genre - Science based Thriller
  
  
  #plot
  Michelle finds herself on an abandoned oil rig when Kurt sweet talks her into working here for more money. But she notices something odd about the oil rig and she is curious to find out.
  Jens Erik, a police officer who hates immigrants, or so his daughter believes, had discovered an unidentified body of a black man in the sea which he cannot forget and sets in to investigate.
  Harris is living a life with the past erased and a new identity, when he is assigned a task by a man he calls Mermaid.
  
  As all 3 of them are trying to find their respective answers they come across something extremely shocking and disturbing.
  
  #bookreview
  The Body By The Shore is a speculative fiction which is heavy on science. By blurb it seems to be a normal thriller but it is not.
  The action takes place switching from one character to another at every chapter.
  Initially i found it a bit hard to get into the story as it was all scene settings and science stuff. But as i read further it all came together and made so much sense and from thereon it was irresistible. It was like storm in a tea cup.
  Although it is fiction, it felt well within the bounds of possibility. I enjoyed the ending as it was nail biting. The language is high level but i liked the way the author narrates. It was something different i read in a long time. It was both informative and thrilling for me. Because it made me think that something like this could be possible.
  
  I wont recommend this to beginners. If you are someone who loves to read scientific stuff you can go for it.
• 
  Jelly

  I am someone very generous in how many stars I give a book. I say that because I had to literally drag myself through this book. It has pacing issues. The first 2/3rd of it felt impossibly dragged out for no reason. The last 70 or so pages are the climax and where the story actually starts paying off and starts feeling rewarding. However, 200 pages of slow burn? Really? It is the sheer opposite of a book that you cannot put down. It doesn’t do much to hook you in and thus it’s very easy to just lose interest. It almost put me in a reading slump and for that, I’m very cross. But the ending was good. It felt like the three main characters had a good character arc and the experience did change them, in ways, for the better. I had not really heard of Tabish Khair before this, turns out he is an Indian author and I will be reading more of his work in the future and I hope it will be better than this.
• 
  CJ

  4.5 stars. Similar to Three Body Problem, there’s a heavy dose of science throughout, though I found this a bit more accessible. While I didn’t fully follow some of the cosmic and biological storyline about microbes, I was drawn into the mystery and action on the oil rig.
• 
  Maithreyi Karnoor

  A Deep Reflection on the Human Condition with the Pace of a Racy Thriller
  --------------------------------------------------------------
  The history of science resembles a series of burst bubbles of complacence rather than linear progression of knowledge. There have been answers to questions within these bubbles that have put the world in a lull until that one pesky question came along and threatened the status quo. And these questions – and their askers – have been systematically resisted by the might of institutionalised powers of that era. But each breakthrough – be it heliocentrism or quantum physics or discovery of inoculation – has led to a cascade of technological innovations which have, in turn, not escaped the attention of politics or religion and global capital that have harnessed them for rampant profiteering. Science, it appears, isn’t exactly an innocent enterprise driven purely by the thirst for knowledge.
  It is close to the bursting of such a bubble we inhabit currently that this novel is located. It is set in a decade since the pandemic; not so far into the future where the imagination can run wild, unbound by the fear of verification in one’s own lifetime, and not so close to the present where our senses are too dulled from counting our dead to be closed to a little flight of fantasy. And here, it tells a thrilling, fast-paced story.
  Microbes form the backdrop to this very human tale where the unlikeliest of characters cross paths. A retired Danish policeman who, while not a racist, prefers people to remain in ‘their own countries’. He is at loggerheads with his new-age, academic daughter. A young Caribbean woman who talks to her mother in her head is overcome by the need to transcend her limited world and follows a smooth-talking man with film-star good looks across the world to what turns out to be a sinister place. A retired secret agent who keeps swans for watchdogs gets involved in a secret mission with a hazy purpose. Another one who has lost her savings to cryptocurrency takes a strange new drug to calm herself. Scientists of every hue die, disappear, find spiritualism or common cause with the powerless of the world – all under mysterious circumstances – and play inadvertent roles in a larger plot. A phantom woman of singular beauty flits in and out of the dreams and visions of different characters. A journalist modelled after a real one – the veil over whose identity is so cleverly thin that one knows the author is very pleased with himself for giving her the name he did – is murdered just like her real counterpart. A fellow author is endearingly tuckerised. Then, there are shreds of stories of truncated research, bizarre medieval afflictions, evil geniuses with Nazi sympathies, and stream-of-consciousness meditations upon the earth, the stars, and the universe that waltz across the narrative. There is elucidation on the mysteries of microbiology: single-cell beings that induce suicidal behaviour in larger organisms in order to facilitate their own reproduction and growth. And then, there is the all-too-familiar evil and greed which not only have not changed since the great reckoning of the covid years but having profiteered from it are stronger and craftier than before. Climate change and the refugee crisis rather than continue to be a sore point for corporate capital – to be vehemently denied or ignored – are now the grist of a new money-making machine.
  And these stories and theories culminate deftly in a cinematic climax of grappling bodies, gunshots, explosions, escape, and nail-biting suspense over the fate of the good guys. The triumph of individual will over organised evil may seem far-fetched at first glance. But perhaps it is the message of miracle we all need to survive the glaring faults of the world that is our home. Just like stoicism, humour, and dissociation keep one going, the strength of individual action needn’t be underestimated in making life worthwhile on the planet.
  The Body by the Shore is an interesting and entertaining book which offers much to think about. But in its material and timing, it has a greater significance in the history of ‘Indian writing’ and conceit of strict compartmentalisation of literary genres in general. Perhaps it was important for India as a new nation to write its melancholy out in the early decades of the English novel. Even the greats of arthouse writing have resorted to navel-gazing in ways that aren’t always absolved of self-pity. But it is time that these patterns are broken and the Indian novelist looks more outward and into the future and tells stories that are not necessarily about oneself. Apart from Amitav Ghosh’s Calcutta Chromosome and a couple of other writers whose works have dabbled with dystopia, not many works of Indian authors come to mind who have put aside the rear-view mirror (or plain mirror) in their writing. We need good speculative fiction because having come face-to-face with the dramatic ways in which uncertainty poses itself, speculation is the new reality and speculative fiction that reflects on this is literary fiction. The Body by the Shore may just be the much-needed nudge in this direction.
• 
  Amulya Arasinamakki

  Had loads of potential. But everything fizzles out. Looks more like a first draft of a novel that needs significant editorial intervention.
  
  There are many grand ideas only to be left half-baked and unexplored.
• 
  Ninni

  A different type of crime novel. The characters are relatable and real in spite of the dystopian setting. I feel deep affection for several of the people in the book. Too bad it doesn't lend itself easily to a sequel...
• 
  Jennifer I Nuesi

  A book that stays with you even after reading. Themes that are easy to follow along but hard to unravel. I enjoyed how the science was explained where you can keep along with the storyline.
• 
  Aditi

  A solid 3.5 . Lots of interesting concepts and moves reasonably well .