Sunny has artistic and moral aspirations. He and his posse, civilized monsters, live large and live well. Ajay first sees them out of the big city.
They swallow up the places they go, they invade them, colonize them, move on. Money does that. They want the walnut cake here. They want the banana crepes there. They like this stroganoff. They order dishes from one café to be delivered while they sit in the next. They sit in Purple Haze and order dishes from MoonBeam.
It becomes Ajay’s job to clean up after Sunny’s wild nights and to fetch him his “warm lemon water with grated turmeric,” his fresh croissants and his newspapers, and run his bath on the mornings after. It’s also Ajay’s job to protect Sunny. He learns to fight, and before long he’s a John Wick-like superstud. He nonchalantly snaps bones, cracks skulls and slits throats.
The third primary character is Neda, a journalist whose newspaper is working on a story implicating Sunny’s family in a host of crimes, not least of which is a plan to clear slums and further impoverish their residents. Yet Neda is attracted to Sunny and his life, and they commence an affair.
Kapoor has a cinematic eye. This novel has a lot of moments that feel lush and screenplay-ready: motorcycle rides on roads that cut through paddy fields, seen as if from a drone; pensive drags on cigarettes; looming goons; flights on private jets; VIP rooms; “Silkwood”-style showers to scrub off bad decisions; gangs of nearly naked men covered in grease who emerge from the roadside, as if from a Cormac McCarthy fever dream, to wreak havoc.
She can be a perceptive writer, one who has plenty to say about modern Delhi and the conditions that spawned and that sustain the Wadia crime syndicate. You sense in Ajay’s fractured Horatio Alger bottom-dog story links to novels like Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger” and Mohsin Hamid’s “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.”
But as “Age of Vice” rolls on, the exigencies of plot trample whatever flowers, in the form of complexities, attempt to bloom. The prose heats and begins to tumble down the page like poetry, and it is hardly good poetry:
Now everything is a lie.
His life is a lie.
The pain of this is unbearable.
Or:
But he is obliterating himself.
Turning himself inside out.
Turning himself away.
“Age of Vice” is the first novel in a planned trilogy. People say the two saddest words in the English language are “What party?” But “planned trilogy” cannot be far behind.
Kapoor has so many gifts that it feels churlish to want more from her than this sprawling pop novel. She’s aimed at a target, and she’s crushed that target.
Better her on the best-seller list than most of what’s there. All hail the new Puzo! When the FX series commences, I’ll bring the popcorn.
AGE OF VICE | By Deepti Kapoor | 548 pp. | Riverhead Books | $30
