Customer Reviews

Hero's Walk

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just finished one of the most amazing books I've
read this year. The Hero's Walk is undoubtedly one of
the finest books ever written in English by an Indian.

What makes this book so different and refreshing apart
from the plot is the treatment of the books and its
characters. The plot revolves around Sripathi Rao - a
simple man with simple needs in the town of Totapuram
nestled in the South of India - and in the Big House
we meet his wife Nirmala - the ever docile Indian Wife
- his horrendous mother Ammaya who in most respects
can be labelled a witch - his unmarried sister Putti -
who longs for the boy next door, and his son Arun - a
rebellion in the true sense of the word.

Amidst all this lies the past - of his daughter Maya
getting married to a foreigner and residing in
Vancouver - who has never seen her family for seven
years now. Her father has abolished her very name
being taken in the house - till she and her husband
Alan meet with an accident and Sripathi has to go to
Canada to claim his granddaughter Nandana.

With her parents no more, Nandana is lost and confused
in India and is trying to connect stuff to her past -
which is quite a task for a seven-year old.

The story revolves around the fact that simplicity is
the biggest act of heroism. Badami's style of writing
is dry, subtle and so so heartbreaking that it almost
had me on the verge of tears.

Though the authhor does remind you of R.K. Narayan at
various points in the book, she does have the finesse
to take you by surprise. A great read!

This is the most singularly wonderful book I have read in years. Others have reviewed the emotional/psychological aspects of the book, so I will address her depiction of India. I lived in southern India from 1996 to 1997 and Anita Badami's description of the area and the people of India were absolutely on the money. It was a sympathetic, if unforgiving, depiction of her homeland. When the monsoons hit, the streets do run with sewage. The electricity does go off many times throughout the day. The heat is brutal before the monsoons hit. There are scalper's selling tickets to the movies! And Deepavali is a festival of light and fireworks that I remember fondly, coming in the cool wet season of the year. I would read a passage and close my eyes and instantly be transported back to my room in Bangalore with the rumbling of the coming monsoon storm; the smell of dinner being prepared by Radha, our cook, who kept pictures and statues of gods and goddesses from every conceivable religion in the pantry next to our kitchen ("It is best, madam, to honor all the gods. You never know."); and the funny cry of those strange little squirrels with the two stripes down their backs. This book will forever remain on my shelf of favorites, to be read again and again in the future.

The paralyzing heat at 5:00 a.m. on a July morning in Toturpuram, on the southeast coast of India, is depicted in intense, sensual imagery from the opening of the novel and becomes a metaphor for the lives of the Rao family. Three generations living together in a large and decaying house which they cannot afford to maintain, the Raos constantly carp at each other and seethe with long-standing resentments, the emotional temperature rising in concert with the heat, which "[hangs] over the town in long, wet sheets."

Author Badami carefully selects her details to reveal both the realities of her characters' lives and the emotional climate they inhabit. The grande dame and grandmother of the family, Ammayya, is a slightly senile, mean-spirited, and caste-conscious woman, who controls her son Sripathi, her daughter Putti, and her long suffering daughter-in-law Nirmala. With unusual and homely similes and metaphors, Badami establishes the tone. Nirmala is "like a bar of Lifebuoy soap, functional but devoid of all imagination." Nirmala and Sripathi are "like a pair of bullock yoked together, endlessly turning the water wheel round and round, eyes bent to the earth." The cloudy sky is "curdled milk."

Romance is the heart of the action. The problems in the marriage of Ammayya and her husband, and of Sripathi and Nirmala are described in detail. By contrast, Sripathi's daughter Maya has happily married an American and lives in the U.S, but she has been banished from Sripathi's life for defying his wishes. When Maya and her husband Alan are killed in an accident, leaving an 8-year-old daughter the Raos have never met, they bring this silent and traumatized orphan to India and into their uncertain lives.

Predictably, the family learns from each other and begins to communicate, but the events which bring about these changes are either telegraphed early in the book (the fate of Putti, Sripathi's sister, for example) or result from external chance and not from their own actions. Additionally, the responses of the child to her strange, new environment do not ring true. Already traumatized and silent, this fragile child faces additional traumas after her arrival in Toturpuram, including some very dramatic ones at the end of the book, yet she seems to suffer no ill effects. Badami tells us the book is about "the chanciness of existence, the beauty and the hope and the loss that always accompanies life," themes she has abundantly illustrated, but the warm and fuzzy ending owes more to chance than what we or the characters would expect. Mary Whipple

This is a poignant look at the tumultous life of an Indian family; their traditions, joys and sorrows. The characters are wonderfully drawn, the story simple yet compelling. We are given an intimate look into the daily lives of each member of the family. Each character a marvelous study unto themselves. We feel the family's pain and small joys, as they try as best they can to exist in a society that seems to be falling apart around them. Unlike another reviewer who grew tired of the 'excessive' references to sights, sounds and smells, I was fascinated by these descriptions, even when reading about the family waking up to find their home flooded by raw sewage! A final note, if any of you think your mother-in-law is a pain, wait until you meet Ammayya! I would highly recommend this novel.

As a native of South Asia, the things referenced in the book rang true with me...the characters' voices, their actions, their reactions...it was all so familiar. Badami obviously knows what she's talking about! In particular, you had to love Sripathi...what a character. I'd be curious to know if the author actually knows people like the ones she has written about. At any rate, she's written a book that deserves praise and plenty of attention.

This is one of a handful of books that have taken up permanent residence in my mental library. The characters are vividly drawn and the plot is masterfully driven. From time to time, a passage from the book will revisit me. Once again I am reminded that human drama crosses all cultural lines.

A beautiful story filled with humor, tragedy and compassion.

This was such a wonderful book to read. It's the type of book, that attracts your attention in the first page and you just can't put it down till the end. I am giving this wonderful book to my mother-in-law to read. I know she'll love it.

I absolutely adore this book! Anita Rau Badami has managed to beautifully incorporate the mind-set of both middle-aged, traditional Indian parents, with that of a child being brought up by mixed parents, in Canada.
The characters come to life and their emotions pull the reader into the pages and the plot.
It is beautifully written, and the story itself is very realistic. The characters are each victims in their own ways and Badami has been able to portray them, not as characters in a story, but as people living in our world, surviving the laughter and tears of everyday life.
Read this book, it might really help to change your life...or simply to make you think.

This is a beautifully written book, especially with its slow lead into characterization. The characters have depth and presence and the reader can feel and connect with them all.

This novel is about an Indian man who is estranged from his daughter because she forsook an arranged marriage in India to marry a Canadian. She has tried to reconcile with her father who has coldly, with prideful distance, refused any connection with her. She and her husband die suddenly in an automobile accident and their traumatized daughter is left to be raised by her Indian grandparents.

How Sripathi works through his grief, confronting the pain of his choices which can never be undone, marks the essence of this book. The family comes alive on the pages, all in subtle and unambiguous character development.

I highly recommend this book.

A Hero's walk is both a vivid, ala non-fiction portrayal of life in India and a richly-told fictional story of an extended family.

The story is set in a big, old house in southern India, complete with the heat, dust, street vendors, smells, sounds, neighbors, routine daily occurances, and a little squalor, all authentically rendered by an observant, native writer.

The family centers around the mis-understood, under-the-gun husband and his family's issues, his long-suffering, non-entity wife, her chronically unhappy (read whining, but vicious) aging Mother, their neer-do-well, lazy son, their long-missed successful daughter who has abandoned the family and India for the good life in Canada, her invisible husband, and their much-loved grandaughter.

Without giving anything away, the story leads to trauma for the grandaughter told very feelingly from her point of view. A very good novel.