Bombay Time (Reading Group Guides) [Paperback]

Thrity Umrigar (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Picador USA (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312301634
• ISBN-13: 978-0312301637
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Thrity Umrigar is the best-selling author of the novels Bombay Time, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet and The Weight of Heaven. She is also the author of the memoir, First Darling of the Morning. Her books have been translated into many languages and published in numerous countries.

The Space Between Us was a finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins award, while her memoir was a finalist for the Society of Midland Authors award. Thrity was recently awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize for midcareer artists.

Thrity was born in Bombay, India and came to the U.S. when she was 21. As a Parsi child attending a Catholic school in a predominantly Hindu country, sh had the kind of schizophrenic and cosmopolitan childhood that has served her well in her life as a writer. Accused by teachers and parents alike of being a daydreaming, absent-minded child, she grew up lost in the fictional worlds created by Steinbeck, Hemingway, Woolf and Faulkner. She would emerge long enough from these books to create her own fictional and poetic worlds. Encouraged by her practical-minded parents to get an undergraduate degree in business, Thrity survived business school by creating a drama club and writing, directing and acting in plays. Her first short stories, essays and poems were published in national magazines and newspapers in India at age fifteen.

After earning a M.A. in journalism Thrity worked for several years working as an award-winning reporter, columnist and magazine writer in America. She also earned a Ph.D. in English. In 1999, Thrity won a one-year Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, which is given to mid-career journalists.

While at Harvard, Thrity wrote Bombay Time. The publication and success of the novel allowed her to make a career change and in 2002 she accepted a teaching position at Case Western Reserve University, where she teaches creative writing, journalism and literature. She also does occasional freelance pieces for national publications and has written for the Washington Post's and the Boston Globe's book pages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a charming and sensitive novel, June 24, 2002

By 

Simon Cross (RUSTINGTON, West Sussex. United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bombay Time: A Novel (Hardcover)

In Bombay Time, Thrity Umrigar focusses on a small neighbourhood community of Parsi Indians. All share a common bond for the apartment block that they share, and a common bond of heritage and religion.On the face of it, the characters all have a reasonably high standard of living, but Umrigar scratches the surface to guide us to the real hearts of the characters.

The starting point for this exploration is the tail end of a wedding reception for the son of one of the couples, when the only guests left are those that have grown old together. The groom, Mehernosh, has grown up in the company of all the favoured guests, and has surprised most of them by returning to Bombay after studying law in the US. Each successive chapter concentrates on one or two of the reception guests, and reflects upon formative incidents in their lives. These incidents may have left them physically or mentally scarred, but all have grown through their pain into new more fully-fledged people.

For the final two chapters, all the characters are brought together to share joy and fleeting pain, and all again finish the evening wiser than they started. Although very much in the background, the city of Bombay too develops its character as the novel progresses.

Umrigar writes beautifully and sensitively, and I recommend highly this delicate and thoughtful novel.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fairly interesting, but..., October 12, 2004

By 

n.rivot (Rockville, MD United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bombay Time: A Novel (Hardcover)

Some of the characters are interesting and come to life. However, there is a tendency to purple prose (one of the characters hears the sound of his heart breaking), too many cute little Indian phrases, and the occasional howler: as an example, "valorized"(!) instead of "valued". There is no real story, just a series of vignettes. This author just is not in the class of Rohinton Mistry, S. Taroor, or Jhumpa Lahiri.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Skillful use of words, November 20, 2004

By 

Lemas Mitchell "Libertarian/ Empiricist" (Hunan Changsha) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bombay Time: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book was good all around. A very light and easy read.

1. It shows us that people seem to like to be miserable wherever they are and at whatever time we choose to observe them. It doesn't seem to depend on anything.

2. The length was neither too long nor too short. Some books just drag on and on and on. In addition to the strong characterizations, the author gave us an idea of the magnitude of poverty in India and the destructive nature of the caste system that people don't seem to want to emerge from no matter how many centuries pass.

3. The characters were very well developed and believable. Again, just enough detail was used-- but not too much. And many of these characters are something that we might imagine having seen in real life.