The Namesake, Ch. 1 [Side Thoughts]

One thing I don't like about this book so far is that it switches between describing present and past events in present tense. There are also a lot of run-on sentences that are lengthy and confusing. I find it difficult to understand and have to re-read sentences several times just to make sense of what is being said. For example, Ashima's departure from Calcutta is described like this: "It wasn't until she was on the plane, flying for the first time in her life on a BOAC VC-10 whose deafening ascent twenty-six member of her family had watched from the balcony at Dum Dum Airport, as she was drifting over parts of India she'd never set foot in, and then even farther, outside India itself, that she'd noticed the watch among the cavalcade of matrimonial bracelets on both her arms: iron, gold, coral, conch."