Was Arundhati Roy's new novel worth the 20-year wait?

It's not as if Arundhati Roy has done nothing in the 20 years between the publication of her debut, Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. It's just that, while she has travelled the world fighting caste, globalisation, fundamentalism and other evils of the modern era, she has only published nonfiction over that period.

So it's no surprise that the publication of Roy's second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, is one of the most anticipated highlights of the publishing year, and like any great expectation the novel has been met with both acclaim and disdain.

At over 400 pages and featuring a large cast of characters, it's certainly a book that demands significant dedication on the part of its readers.

For fans of Roy's first book and the novels of Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Seth, she delivers a satisfying, multi-character, time-travelling tale teeming with the kind of storytelling and examination of the ever shifting social relationships of India that one would expect. It is also a vigorous and ebullient testament to the power of love to heal divisions.

It begins with the journey of Anjum, a hijra or transgender woman, who lives in a kind of commune in Delhi before landing up in Kashmir and finally in a graveyard where she lives as a tree, interacting with a variety of misfits and marginalised visitors.

The book is often frustratingly uneven as the story jumps to focus on S Tilottama, an enigmatic architect and love interest of three men. However there's enough humour and poetry to keep readers onside in spite of some dry historical recaps of incidents such as the corruption of Indira Ghandi, the Gujarat riots in 2002, the violence of the rise of Hindu nationalism and India's current prime minister, Narendra Modi.

These political considerations reflect Roy's own 20 years of activism both in her native India and beyond.

While this book is perhaps less carefully crafted than The God of Small Things, it is also a reflection of her growth as a person and a novelist who has made an ambitious attempt to reflect all the complexities of the society she sees around her.

There's a palpable restlessness to all the characters and none of them ever seem to manage to resolve the rushing contradictions pulsing within them. Their stories are much like our own lives - fragmented, scattered and often unresolved.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness may demand much and be trying to say everything, but there are certainly plenty of pleasures to be had from Roy's welcome return to the world of fiction. As one of her characters reminds us, the way to "tell a shattered story" is not "by slowly becoming everybody", but rather "slowly becoming everything".

Roy has delivered a book that, like the land it seeks to come to terms with and which its author clearly loves, is a gloriously colourful mess of contradictions and insights.

• This article was originally published in The Times.