A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves #1)

Paul Bryant

Rating: really liked it
After about page 200 I realised this was like eating Turkish Delight morning noon and night and my spiritual teeth were beginning to dissolve under a tide of sickliness which didn't ever let up. All these characters are so unbearably cute, even the less-nice ones. If post-independent India was crossed with Bambi, it would be Vikram Seth's endless gurgling prose.
So I stopped reading and drove several three inch nails into my head, and I've been all right since then.

Lisa of Troy

Rating: really liked it
A Mess of A Story That Could Have Been Great

A Suitable Boy is a behemoth book of approximately 1,500 pages by Vikram Seth which is allegedly about a young woman named Lata who is trying to find a suitable boy to marry. The book centers on four different families as well as various political and social movements in India in the 1950’s.

Never have I encountered a book that was more in need of an editor. There were far, far, far too many characters. The book starts off by displaying family trees, four family trees. However, that would not even cover all of the characters by a long shot. There were friends, politicians, teachers, sisters, musicians, and many more. The author really should have focused on a smaller set of characters and written several books rather than this mess.

Additionally, this book was boring. It was like watching paint dry. If you want to read a great book set in India, I would highly recommend A Fine Balance. With so many characters in A Suitable Boy, it was difficult to connect with anyone. After the first one hundred pages, I thought that the pacing would pick up, but it didn’t. As if following 4 families wasn’t enough, this book was also some type of historical fiction. However, it didn’t work for me. The author would talk in excruciating detail about certain religious and political moments, but the reader wasn’t given enough information to put the moments into context. It would have been helpful to summarize the historical context or even hint at some of the context so that the reader could look it up. But I felt like I was thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool, drowning.

After nearly 1,500 pages, the ending felt rather rushed and non-eventful. Lata makes her choice suddenly and with very little fanfare. This was rather disappointing after slogging through so much. The other disappointment with this book is that I could not find an audiobook for this book that was not unabridged, and the prose was not very smooth.

The most interesting part about this book was Cuddles the dog who went around and bit everyone.

Well, another one to cross off the 100 Books To Read Before You Die According the BBC….(30/100)
https://www.listchallenges.com/bbcs-t...

2022 Reading Schedule
Jan Animal Farm
Feb Lord of the Flies
Mar The Da Vinci Code
Apr Of Mice and Men
May Memoirs of a Geisha
Jun Little Women
Jul The Lovely Bones
Aug Charlotte's Web
Sep Life of Pi
Oct Dracula
Nov Gone with the Wind
Dec The Secret Garden

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Lynne King

Rating: really liked it
This is a magnificent saga, which left me breathless and awaiting the next word, set in India at the beginning of the fifties.

"Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth's “epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families - the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with. There are standards to be met and finding a husband for Lata becomes a family affair in which all the members are to play a part.”

“The richness of this book is remarkable. What with marriage, religion, customs, etc. it has been a really fascinating read for me.”

India's caste system has four main classes (also called varnas) based originally on personality, profession and birth.

I’m eternally grateful to Fionnuala for suggesting that I may perhaps like this author. Do I like Vikram Seth? No, of course not. I just happen to adore him. I think that he’s absolutely splendid. I get the same pleasure reading this book as when I’m eating lobster or tasting a superb Burgundy wine or whatever sublime other pleasures that we have in life…My…

I must confess that I had never heard of Seth before and I wouldn’t if it hadn’t been for Goodreads. It’s one of those remarkable books that becomes a reference book that once read, you can open it at any page and still get that continual enjoyment. It’s a wonderful sensation to savour…

It’s always so difficult for me to write a review on a book that I “love to death” but that has been the case here. This is now my second favourite fiction book after “The Alexandria Quartet” and I could never do that justice. Bravo for the past for Durrell and for the present for Vikram Seth.

In conclusion, Fionnuala and Seth – thank you for giving me so much pleasure. What a serendipitous find. I love this book.

Whitaker

Rating: really liked it
I know some GR’ers didn’t really cotton on to the style of this book. And maybe it was because I read this while on vacation in India itself, but wow! Just W.O.W! It’s a fucking long book—1,500 pages. And every single page was worth the time I spent on it and more.

If Midnight’s Children is India’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, then A Suitable Boy must be its War and Peace. It’s got the same melding of personal lives seen in amidst great national events. Instead of the romance of Natasha and Pierre, it’s that of Lata and her three suitors. Instead of the war with France, we have the post-Independence and post-Partition politics of a nation searching for an identity. And instead of descriptions of war, we get exchanges of heated debate on the floor of the state parliament, and the passing of a contentious bill.

Seth looks at the lives of four families intertwined by marriage and friendship. And all the detail—and it is indeed loving detail—is very very necessary to immerse you in the India of the 1950s, and what it felt like to be alive then. We get details of village life, life in the city, life of the different castes, business life, religious life, modern life, traditional life. It’s all there. And it works in tandem with several great stories of love and passion, and what these mean, both at the level of family, romance, and nation.

Word has it that Seth is working on a follow up (not sure if it’s a sequel as such) to be called “A Suitable Girl”. I, for one, can’t wait.

Sim

Rating: really liked it
*Spoiler alert*

I finally finished reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. For some reason, I used to avoid picking it up and kept putting it off. I suppose it was mainly the size (it’s one thick book - approximately 1500 pages!) but I also think it had to do with this misconception I had that it would be a tough read, that Seth’s writing would be pompous and saturated with flowery descriptions of rivers winding through the green and yellow village of GraamNagar. Imagine my surprise when I find that the language is smooth, his tone light and his narrative interesting. The fact that Seth managed to keep the threads of the numerous plots and subplots clear in his head is an accomplishment in itself, but even more impressive is how each characters of his story is real; they are people we recognize, with mannerisms we’ve noticed in ourselves and others, and dialogues we’ve heard, thought or spoken.

The title might suggest that it’s the story of finding the perfect marriage candidate for the central character but that would be belittling the grand work that is A Suitable Boy. It is the story of the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Khans, the Chatterjis and a myriad of other characters, such as Saeeda Bai and Kakoli, many of whom are fleshed out substantially, even when their appearance is minimal. The beauty of the story arises from their interactions with each other, their thoughts and their ups and downs. Little details that create vivid images of a decaying courtesan’s world, a cosmopolitan Calcutta, the shoemakers’ rank (as in rancid) neighbourhoods and so on. The story covers about a year of the characters’ lives, detailing the day to day mundanity. Little decisions — a smile here, a letter there, a glass of nimbu pani (lemon-water) every now and then - are what makes the story. Yet these little decisions, these microsteps that are taken, culminate in huge changes that are noticed only in hindsight.

I’m probably not giving away any surprises when I say that I was thoroughly pissed off at Lata Mehra’s decision to marry Haresh Khanna. I shouldn’t have been surprised because Lata does say in the first few pages, ” I always obey my mother” and so the ending wasn’t so much a surprise as it was a disappointment. I did understand why she did it, but I couldn’t help my acute disappointment in her all the same. I was genuinely frustrated at her pigheadedness, her thought process that led her to this decision. I was angry because I am afraid that her reasoning resonated with the coward in everyone, especially south asian girls who have had to, or will have to, at least discuss the concept of arranged marriage at some point in their lives.

Ironically, her mother later suffered a number of qualms herself about whether Haresh would be the right boy for her daughter. Had Lata decided against the marriage, Mrs. Mehra would have been perfectly amenable, especially since Lata’s yuppie brother Arun did not condone the marriage either. So why did Lata decide to snub both Kabir, the Muslim she fell in love with, or Amit, the Bengali poet she could fall in love with easily? Her reasoning in the last few pages was scary because it reminded me of how we would rather our lives be a smooth ride of mediocrity than a roller coaster of brilliance that plummets from time to time. We choose to be mediocre-ly happy - the utilitarian idea that the “aim of action should be the largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest number” (http://www.m-w.com).

She says, “I’m not myself when I’m with him [Kabir]. I ask myself, who is this - this jealous, obsessed woman….I don’t want to [passionately love him], I don’t know want to. If that’s what passion means, I dont’ want it.”

Once Lata makes her decision, we know that she will lead her life contently enough. It upset me because I saw Lata in a number of people I know in real life, including myself. Mind you, I am not advocating against arranged marriage as a whole because I know they can work. Lata’s sister Savita, who marries Pran after meeting him only once in front of her elders, does genuinely fall in love with him and go on to lead a happy life. So it’s not that arranged marriages are wrong. I just felt that Lata was wrong in her decision to marry Haresh. Even if he was considered fair and good looking, confident and ambitious. Ironically, from Haresh’s side, it’s not exactly a traditional arranged marriage. He arranges his nuptials himself because he doesn’t like the parents getting involved in this matter; his parents already know that he will run away (metaphorically speaking) if they try to set him up. So to Haresh, this is a decision he’s making by himself for his own benefit. Haresh had already been in love with someone else before, had neatly folded away his Devdas romanticism for that girl and was ready now to live a contented life with someone else (it just happened to be Lata). He is oh so bloody honest about his feelings for this girl, and that he knows it won’t ever happen and so must move on… Lata wanted his practicality, his forceful ability to get things done, his willingness to help out her family members. What angered me was the underlying assumption that Kabir/Amit couldn’t be all those things, that they would be selfish beings simply because they would also love her, and she would have to him (either him) back.

My favourite characters in the book are Amit Chatterji and Pran Kapoor. I know Vikram Seth denies fashioning Amit after him, but to be honest, for some reason while I was reading about Amit’s tendencies for the necessary inactivity that comes with being a writer, I thought of Seth. What I liked about Amit was that he was the uber intellectual: his tone was oft-sardonic, his amusement frequent, his observations of people accepting and piercing. He talked a lot and said very little. He was cryptic in his cynicism. I loved him. Lata rejects him on the basis of his being "high-maintenance" type - someone who needs his meals laid out for him, who wouldn’t have time for her if he was working on a novel, and whose moodswings are as frequent as her own. I don’t buy that completely. He did make the time for her, he knew how to be charming and behave in society (he wasn’t an absent-minded intellectual), he knew what he wanted and he knew how to get what he wants. Lata was right in that he wouldn’t fall apart at her rejection, but I think it’s not his insensitivity that would allow him to be friends with her after her marriage, but his excessive civility, his sophistication and his writer’s acceptance of life.

My other favourite character, Pran Kapoor - a thin, dark quiet professor - is a sweetheart. The kind of nice guy who doesn’t begrudge his mother-in-law’s long vacations with them, who plays April Fools Day jokes on people because “those who aren’t conscious of the date must take the consequences”. He is the ultimate good son, who quietly accepts his arranged marriage and falls in love with his wife. His was the real arranged marriage, in the true sense of the word, and yet you cannot dislike him or his wife Savita because they are both so lovable people, that you just know that they were destined to be together, no matter how they got together.

For those of you who haven’t read it, do. Trust me, I can’t begin to describe the many shades there are to each character and how nothing I say will completely do justice to them. I got mad at one character’s one decision, not at the book. Seth is amazing. His voice is uninstrusive and style very graceful. That’s the word: graceful. Despite its size, you get a soft feeling reading it. True it is a tad tedious at times. Some of the political parts and some of the characters could have been done without. But in the end, you can’t get angry at someone who gives you the whole cake when all you asked for was a slice.

Em Lost In Books

Rating: really liked it
WOW! I didn't want this to end even after reading more than 1400 pages and heartbreakingly it ended but am glad this book made me feel so many emotions. I haven't read something like this in a long time, it was just spellbinding.

Rajat Ubhaykar

Rating: really liked it
I don't even know where to begin gushing about this one, so panoramic is its scope and so delightful its literary charms. Vikram Seth's 800,000 word magnum opus is lengthier than War and Peace and more compulsively readable than a well-paced soap opera. It is an event in one's life. I call it a soap opera, because fundamentally, the plot is a family drama, revolving around the wooers of its principal character, Lata Mehra.

Set in the early 1950s and written with a forceful simplicity akin to R K Narayan, it covers 18 months in the entwined lives of four families - the Mehras, Kapoors, Chatterjis, and Khans - and through these characters proffers an intricate peek into a most fascinating (and neglected) period in Indian history. It is an uncertain era; the subcontinent has been Partitioned on religious grounds and India is making its wobbly transition from feudalism to democracy. The First Great General Elections are to be held in 1952 and the central legislative event is the abolition of the oppressive zamindari system, and with it, an entire way of life: courtesans, Hindustani classical musicians and purana khidmatgars. Caste is beginning to make itself felt in electoral calculations, and Nehru remains a force to be reckoned with. On this level, A Suitable Boy is painstakingly researched historical fiction. Seth writes with a level of detail that is unreal. As one reviewer notes, "he writes with the omniscience and authority of a large, orderly committee of experts on Indian politics, law, medicine, crowd psychology, urban and rural social customs, dress, cuisine, horticulture, funerary rites, cricket and even the technicalities of shoe manufacture."

A Suitable Boy is undoubtedly one of the biggest achievements of world literature and will remain one of my all-time favourites. I feel lucky to have read it at this point in time since I can't wait for its sequel coming out next year, the appropriately titled A Suitable Girl.

EDIT: It's been over four years since I wrote this review. Seth still hasn't finished A Suitable Girl, though I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth the wait.

Arah-Lynda

Rating: really liked it
I finished Vikram Seth’s tome A Suitable Boy this Sunday morning while enjoying my coffee and a white chocolate, coconut Christmas cookie that my daughter had baked just last night. All right, all right, I confess it was actually two white chocolate, coconut Christmas cookies. But who can blame me really. They were so good. Not too sweet, she had gone ahead and reduced the suggested amount of sugar, resulting in a perfect blend of sweet with just a hint of salt and a nice moist and chewy texture. And just the right size, one is not enough but two, hmmmmmm just right. Yum yum.


I wish I could say that this book also displayed just the right balance. Set in the early 1950’s in a newly independent India, A Suitable Boy focuses on the lives of four large families, connected by marriage or friendship, though most notably that of Lata Mehra, whose mother Mrs. Rupa Mehra, is intent on conducting an agonizing (hers) search, that pulls in all members of her immediate and extended family, to find a suitable husband for Lata.

The story immerses you into the daily details of these families’ lives and indeed of India at that time and place. No stone is left unturned and no player too insignificant to escape the authors unquestionable skill in drawing rich characterizations and beautifully imagined settings. Through these people the reader is swept into a multiethnic society during an unsettling time of religious fervour and political unrest. It is all here: love, beauty, squalor, hatred, the caste system, prejudice, appalling violence and heart stopping tenderness.

For me however there was just way too much detail. I really did not need to dive so deeply into the political manoeuvrings involved in passing a bill or the entire history of their philosophic or cultural rituals. There was so much detail, so deeply layered into the story that it detracted from, rather than enhanced my enjoyment of it. I found myself remembering John Galt’s speech way too often. I mean there is such a thing as too much icing on what is an already delicious cinnamon bun.


It is unfortunate, I believe that the editors did not cut some of that detail away, allowing the story to blossom in its own right as my daughter did with the sugar in her cookie recipe.

Edward

Rating: really liked it
A Suitable Boy describes a year in the life of the fledgling Indian democracy, indirectly told through the experiences of four connected families and a litany of supporting characters, who, due to the diversity of their occupations and social positions, are able to explore various facets – political, legal, social, cultural, religious, artistic – of the India of this period, and the clash of its opposing cultural forces: traditional versus modern values, religion versus secularism, Hinduism versus Islam, Eastern versus Western culture, and democracy versus serfdom, to name a few.

The titular story concerning Mrs Mehra’s search for a husband for her daughter, Lata, though just one of many stories that the novel weaves together, stands out due to what it reveals about the norms and cultural prejudices of the time. We see in Lata an intelligent young woman who has received a modern education, but is pressured by family and cultural expectations to take on a traditional female role (While her plight is no means as bleak, I was reminded of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, in terms of the dissociation between education and eventual societal role). In Lata’s story there is a contemplation of what it means to seek happiness, an evaluation of the importance of love, of the fine balance between passion and security, of the necessary compromise of values that is thrust on an individual by their cultural context, where to either fight or relent to pressure requires in one way or another a sacrifice or self.

As an outsider, I was struck by the stratification of the society, where one must be utterly obsequious to one’s superiors, and trample upon those below, in order to reinforce one’s status. The caste system locks people into the positions they are assigned at birth, preventing social mobility. In this culture status and position are everything. There is a casual, internalised racism, a sensitivity to the degree of darkness of one’s skin, that manifests in all sorts of interactions, from choosing a mate, to business relationships, to deciding with whom to associate. There is an enormous disparity in fortunes between the wealthy and powerful, who occupy great mansions and large estates, and who are all but unreachable by the law, and the majority of the lower castes, who are forced into subservient roles, living on a pittance in utterly squalid conditions, without any hope of improving their lot. To the list of Hitchens’ Religions That Poison Everything, let us not omit the otherwise fairly innocuous Hinduism, whose dogma of karmic rebirth provides religious justification for this horrible system of oppression. There is evidence in this book of a gradual abandonment of these attitudes, which I hope has been precipitated by the last 70 years of democracy.

Striking also is the extent of social and political disunity, which I’m sure is in no small part due to the “divide and conquer” policy of the British. (It’s amazing the extent that the British were able to transform the country in their own image in such a short time, and the degree to which many of the characters would define themselves as, or aspire to be, English. The closer one dresses, speaks and acts as an Englishman, the more refined he is. Conversely, the more “Indian” he appears by his accent or demeanour, the lower his standing and his desirability. Though there are surely lingering benefits of British colonialism, this kind of internalised oppression seems to me to be fairly odious.) The India of this period is depicted as a heterogeneous multicultural society, where the religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and ideological differences constantly threaten to disrupt stability. One gets a real sense of the fragility of the young Indian democracy, where there was a real possibility of failure and collapse. Partition was a tragedy that affects the world to this day, but overall the enduring survival of Indian democracy through these times of turmoil has been a wonderfully fortunate benefit to the world. It is easy to imagine a world where things had turned out differently.

In terms of the prose, I did not enjoy Seth’s bland and relentless Realism. In nearly 1,500 pages, there is not a single sentence worth underlining, not a single interesting metaphor, and rarely anything resembling a profound authorial insight. Instead, the story is told in a flat style of alternating description and dialogue, with the omniscient narrator jumping freely between the thoughts of the different characters. This style has caused the book to be compared to some of the great works of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century, of which it is reminiscent. Many people seem to like this kind of writing, but it’s not my cup of tea.

I’m rating this book more generously than its literary merits would seem to warrant. This is a very long novel, and though it is arguable whether many sections were essential to include, on the whole it paints a thoughtful, detailed and complex picture of post-independence India, with all the wonderful, as well as the disagreeable aspects of its culture. Indeed, the India of Seth’s novel is a land of contradictions, of inequality, of oppression, and yet of hope through the experiment of democracy. If nothing else, I will miss his characters, who, though they are a little saccharine (I don’t disagree with Paul Bryant's assessment), are delightful companions with whom to undertake such a long journey.

Sarah

Rating: really liked it
Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy is one of the best books I've ever read in my entire life. It's a long book. But it is very engaging; I managed to read it in one stretch, with a break to sleep, while I awaited the movers to take me and my belongings across the country. To my chagrin I had completed it before my flight, and when it finished I didn't want the book to be over, I wanted to go back and re-read it from the beginning. It is one of the best books about life in India I've ever read, it is the anti-Kite Runner book. There is nothing trite or stereotyped about the characterization; it believably describes elements of society that are even oblique to people within the mainstream of modern Indian society; the plot is not simple, nor is it a convoluted mystery story.

Writing this up I think I should go get it and read it again. Like most of my favorite books I gave it away a long time ago.

Vartika

Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars: A Great Indian Novel in both scale and scope

Those familiar with the unique dramatic phenomenon that are Hindi television soaps would see why many tend to bring them up in comparison with A Suitable Boy: both are interminably long and contend, prima facie, with the quintessentially Indian concept of arranged marriage. And yet, this is where the similarities largely end, for Vikram Seth's delightful literary behemoth extends its scope beyond the personal destinies of its characters and deals, too, with that of the fledgling democracy within which their lives come together.

At the center of this magnificent saga lies the young Lata Mehra, whose her mother's attempts to find her a suitable husband through love or through exacting maternal appraisal rope the reader into a story that intertwines four families—The Mehras, Chatterjees, Kapoors, and Khans—across a journey spanning vast tracts of Indian society, many of its vibrant cities, and the tumultuous year before the great elections in 1952 that officially turned the country into the world's largest democracy.

The colourful cast of characters reflects people from various sections of society, from academic circles in Brahmpur to a class of anglicised professionals, poets, and foreign diplomats in Calcutta; from enterprising middle-class shoe tradesmen in Kanpur to the caste-oppressed leatherworkers and untouchable tenant farmers; from the Muslim gentry in Baitar to lower-caste muslim peasants in Rudhia; from courtesans and musicians living off of royal patronage to powerful politicians—the story is knitted, plain and purl, to display the diverse, multifaceted, and often tragic social fabric of the country.

The author portrays delicacy and romance, humour and antagonism, rituals and riots, and the tragicomedy of their contingent coexistence through the immensity and realism of his pointed prose—A Suitable Boy is dramatic, but no more than lived reality, informed as it was by the painful memory of a communal Partition and the realities of class, gender, and (more prominently) caste becoming known through the electoral experiment of universal adult franchise. Seth manages to effortlessly weave into his narrative nuanced discussions on a rarely spoken about period in Indian history, including major events such as the passage and contingencies of the Zamindari Abolition Bill and the split in the Congress Party. I was pleasantly surprised to find issues such as coloniality, the oft-ignored intersection of caste with communal divide, and the Sanskritisation of 'Indian' culture and languages being discussed in what is essentially a love story with both effectiveness and subtlety.

Unlike most tales in its genre, A Suitable Boy does not shy away from exploring how politics influences personal decisions, especially those concerning marriage. Arranged marriage, in particular, is a form of maintaining the prevalent hierarchies drawn along the lines of caste, class, ethnicity and religion, and therefore a 'suitable' match for Lata would, according to convention, be a Hindu and a Khatri. Whereas the author breaks prescription in some ways, he reaffirms them in others—is it perhaps too much to ask for a truly happy ending in a story set in the 1950s? Perhaps not, but it sure isn't realistic. In any case, the tale manages ample comedy in another sense of the word: given the richness of contextual humour and subtle play of words, light-hearted cultural commentary, and other deliberate jokes, I found myself laughing out loud at several points during this book, whereas the simplicity of language and fullness of detail certainly made it a delight to read.

One of the most acclaimed books to come from the Indian subcontinent, A Suitable Boy does not disappoint: with its nuanced exploration of a host of serious themes and its serious physical bulk, it nevertheless remains light and well-rounded—much like life itself.

Rebecca

Rating: really liked it
[I get THAT ending? Some review

Sue

Rating: really liked it
A Suitable Boy takes place over the course of a year in an India which is adjusting not only to independence but to partition. Through the stories of some of the major families of Brahmpur, we observe and participate in not only the day to day activities of individuals but the workings of government, developing industry--some quite primitive, the existence of caste--though outlawed, religious hatred, and the search for love and marriage. There are beauty and violence, squalor and humor, festivals and riots. It is a very full year.

At the center is Lata, searching for that "suitable" boy, the man she will marry.That quest is not finalized until the end of the novel and is worth reading about but so much more is happening. I came to this book with a smattering of knowledge about India and Indian beliefs and customs and come away with a feeling that I have learned enough to want to know more. This is a country both rich and poor: rich in tradition, rich in religious beliefs, rich in an amazing ability to pick itself up from disaster but poor in ability to distribute its wealth and to eliminate its history of castes (I do recognize that this novel is set in the 1950s), poor in eliminating government graft, and poor in eliminating inter-religious strife. All are on display here and have not been eliminated today. (I will not hesitate to say that the country I live in, and most others have many of the same problems to one degree or another.)

But family is at the center of this novel and Lata at the center of one family.


[Lata] wondered what one could do to be born happy, to
achieve happiness, or to have it thrust on one. The baby,
she thought, had arranged to be born happy; she was placid,
and had as good a chance as anyone of happiness in this
world...Pran and Savita, different though their backgrounds
were, were a happy couple. They recognized limits and
possibilities; their yearnings did not stretch beyond their
reach. They loved each other---or, rather, had come to do
so. They both assumed, without ever needing to state it---
or perhaps without even thinking explicitly about
it---that marriage and children were a great good.
( pp 951-952)


This is one of the examples for Lata to observe. Of course there are other, some decidedly less functional.

This book does require a major investment of time and attention but for those who give it, there is a great return. Personally I find well written historical fiction a wonderful road to explore another culture.

Highly recommended!

Megan Baxter

Rating: really liked it
I was never entirely sure who belonged to what family in this book, but it never really bothered me. I mean, after we switched back to a different group of characters, I was able to reconstruct who they were related to fairly easily, but I never could hold the genealogies in my mind.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

Danielle Franco-Malone

Rating: really liked it
This is one of my five all time favorite books (along with the Handmaid's Tale, On Beauty, the Red Tent, & Corelli's Mandolin). It is a patch work story of many characters' lives; by the end of the story, you see how they all intersect.

This was one of those books where when I finished the book I was completely invested in each of the character's life. The story is set in post-independence India and explores a number of social/political issues of the time (i.e. land reform, muslim-hindu relations, women's rights, arranged marriage, the caste system), but the political commentary doesn't hit you over the head, and the characters really drive the story.

Despite my enthusiastic recommendations, I've had a hard time finding anyone to read this book! At 1379 pages it is apparently the longest book to be printed in English in one volume. However I found it to be a total page turner. Just resign yourself to the fact that you'll be reading this book for a couple of months and give it a try.