November Book Intro: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Cara : November 7, 2011 12:39 pm : Book Group, Books, This Month's Book
The reading group book for November is Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance
About the Book
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recalls masters from Balzac to Dickens, this novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism of India. Set in 1975 at a time when the government has declared a state of internal emergency, the story focuses on the lives of four unlikely people who find themselves living in the same humble flat in the city.A widow whose refusal to marry has left her struggling to earn a living as a seamstress; two tailors, who come to the city searching for employment; and a student from a small hamlet in the Himalayan foothills, whose father has sent him to attend college.
Through the dramatic and often shocking turns their lives take, we get an intimate view, not only of their world, but also of India itself in all its extraordinary variety. As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.
Come back at the end of the month and let me know what you thought.
Do you get great book recommendations from unlikely sources?I’d love to hear you choose or are influenced about your next read.
2 Responses to This Month’s Book
[...] Ah, I’m glad about this one, since I’ve been feeling guilty for not writing about Water for Elephants, which I was sent as part of my friend Cara’s online reading group, Love A Book. [...]
I must confess I was prejudiced at the outset- the front page description of this book as a “delicious page-turner” and the ornate title font led me to think this was going to be a very light romantic gallop. To be fair, it was more than this- particularly given the harrowing context of life in Ceaucescu’s Roumania in the 1980s. I found the parts dealing with the emotions arising as a result of the separation of Nora from her boyfriend Gigi and her family after she had escaped Roumania particularly poignant but was surprised that the dilemmas this scenario spawned were not explored in greater depth. And overall I found this an unsatisfactory book in a number of ways. Particularly early on, I felt that the writing was “clunky”, and the pace quite odd- sudden significant events occurring in a matter of a few lines without any real build –up with the story then quickly moving on. I was also irritated by the apparent need to make reference to lists of artists and composers at various points- as if to prove that the research had been done. Whilst there was a clear story line- and some interesting inter-connections built in along the way, ultimately I found the characterisation quite two-dimensional leaving me with very little real interest in the outcome.