I felt it was comparable to the beat generation style in that it is free-natured and ridiculously drug-based. There is really no conflict but the need to escape the police a few times and tight spots for being on a constant cloud nine.

Set in Kerala, India, the two protagonists, Estha and Rehal, are introduced as alienated characters who have changed for the worse from a haunting memory revolving two deaths. Recounting their memories, by jumping back and forth from different timelines, the reader is thrust into a confusing recount of the event that had shaped their alienation.

The reader will be left confused in the beginning which makes the novel a challenge to plow through, and the multitude of strange punctuations, personifications, and metaphors leave it even more unsettling, but the ending is satisfactory, reminiscent, and haunting.

To read the book a second time would be encouraged to get the full effect of Roy's drama.

My Personal Opinion The book was more challenging to read because the way it was written was to prolong the drama and get the reader to focus on key metaphors to understand the character's fully, and overall make Estha and Rahel's life more fittingly romantic.  Although, I'm fond of writing techniques that emphasize on themes, I felt that it was too saturated of descriptions to get me excited at all.

Once a traumatic event is retold, sometimes, I have to reread and make sure that that has actually happened. We're thrust into the world with no knowledge, and in medias res would be fine, but for this novel it did not work so great; although the payoff with finishing allows a certain frustration or love of the characters to settle softly on your heart.

Now, nonfiction is not my favorite genre for a variety of reasons, so I was skeptical when all of a sudden I was tossed out of Laroche's trial and immersed into an entire history of Orchids, Orchid names, and the strange behavior of  Orchid poachers I did not want to learn about. Surprisingly, despite my initial belief that a report on some flower would be a waste of my time, I felt myself compelled to finish it. Not just because it was a book I had to conquer due to my lack of interest, but because gradually I found myself temporarily interested in Orchids as Orlean was whenever I managed to find the time to read. All of a sudden, I began to Google up plant names to be able to observe the grandiose or ugliness of each flower mentioned. I became increasingly interested in the people mentioned in her report. To know people like orchid poachers and harvesters and collectors this intimately was entertaining, surprising, and educational. You would never expect anything like people you get to meet in The Orchid Thief, it's almost hard to believe that these people exist.