Girls, You Simply Have To Read "Shantaram!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                                     This was the book I used to participate in the March Of The Mammoths, where, during the year's third month, one is supposed to read a book with a length of eight hundred or more pages.  "Shantaram" clocks in at 933, and I would not sacrifice any of them.

                                       The novel first came out in 2003, and for years I have been telling myself I must read it.  Thanks to the owner of the Bay Ridge Bookstore, who picked this for my Mammoth book, I finally had the chance to read it.

                                          I did it in eighteen days, which is not bad, but since I began it on March 15, I did not finish till April 2.  Had I begun it on March first, I might have finished around the 19th.

                                          "Shantaram" starts out as a "Count Of Monte Cristo" type story, with a Britisher named Lin, a convict and heroin addict, escaping from an Australian prison.  He winds up in Bombay and has a series of thrilling adventures with a mysterious woman named Karla, my favorite character, Madame Zhou, (I pictured Gale Sondergaard right away!) and a brilliant depiction of the social upheaval after the murder of Indira Ghandi.  And this is just for starters.

                                                 It is epic historical fiction at its best, the kind not written any more, but sadly missed by me.   I was absorbed with "Shantaram," and readers on here will be, too.  Much of the book is fictionalized autobiography, so the author has lived quite a life.

                                                  Twelve years later, in 2015, Gregory David Roberts wrote a sequel to this novel, entitled "The Mountain Shadow."  It clocks in at nine hundred thirty- six pages.

                                                   Maybe that will be my March Mammoth for next year!!!!!!!!!!!!!