Customer Reviews

The Inheritance of Loss

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2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(41)

 

 

Writing with wit and perception, Kiran Desai creates an elegant and thoughtful study of families, the losses each member must confront alone, and the lies each tells to make memories of the past more palatable. Sai Mistry is a young girl whose education at an Indian convent school comes to an end in the mid-1980s, when she is orphaned and sent to live with her grandfather, a judge who does not want her and who offers no solace. Living in a large, decaying house, her grandfather considers himself more British than Indian, far superior to hard-working but poverty-stricken people like his cook, Nandu, whose hopes for a better life for his son are the driving force in his life.

The story of Sai, living in Kalimpong, near India's northeast border with Nepal, alternates with that of Biju, Nandu's son, an illegal immigrant trying to find work and a better life in New York. Biju, working in a series of deadend jobs, epitomizes the plight of the illegal immigrant who has no future in his own country and who endures deplorable conditions and semi-servitude working illegally in the US. As Desai explores the aspirations of Sai and Biju, the hopes and expectations of their families, and their disconnections with their roots, she also creates vivid pictures of the friends and relatives who surround them, evoking vibrant images of a broad cross-section of society and revealing the social and political history of India.

Though Sai's romance, at sixteen, with Gyan, her tutor, provides her with an emotional escape from Kalimpong, it soon becomes complicated by Gyan's involvement with the Gorkha National Liberation Federation, a Nepalese independence movement which quickly becomes violent. Gyan's commitment to the insurgency offers an ironic contrast with the commitment of his family to the colonial British army in earlier times, just as the judge's hatreds, learned in England, are ironically contrasted with his British affectations in later life.

A careful observer of behavior, with a fine eye for revealing details, Desai brings her narrative and characters to life, illustrating her themes without making moral judgments about her characters--creating neither saints nor villains, just ordinary people leading the best lives they can, using whatever resources are available. Her characters, like people from all cultures, make sacrifices for their children, behave cruelly toward people they love, reject traditional ways of life and old values, rediscover what is important to them, suffer at the hands of faceless government officials, and learn, and grow, and make decisions, sometimes ill-considered, about their lives. Dealing with all levels of society and many different cultures, Desai shows life's humor and brutality, its whimsy and harshness, and its delicate emotions and passionate commitments in a novel that is both beautiful and wise. n Mary Whipple

There are moments I love in this book... poignant observations that made me smile and think how brilliantly she'd nailed some unshakeable truth in life. There were details I enjoyed, such as on insects: "entire nations appeared boldly overnight." I loved the gentleness and clever vagueness with which she writes of Uncle Potty and Father Booty's relationship. She captures rage very well, showing how it's usually founded on something terrible from within, rather than on the acts of the target.

But as I read on, I became increasingly frustrated with the one-sided view of a country I've come to know and love. Yes, India has what she portrays, but it has so much more. There is kindness and tenderness amidst the poverty and rage. There are people with next to nothing who will give what they have to help a stranger - gave what they had to help me. Generosity and kindness exist alongside the indignities she portrays. Why not show that balance? I felt at times she was trying so hard, wanting so badly to shock the reader with her tales of vermin and vomit. Yes, that's there too. But it is not at the heart of the matter, and I think Ms Desai has missed that point.

Finally, Ms Desai should fire her editor for the many anachronisms in the book. The 1985-6 was not the time of the Macarena, baggy pants on teenage boys, or the negative use of the term "PC" (politically correct), to name a few. All that came later. Add to that, it appears that no one proofread the last third of the book. This carelessness coincided with how the prose itself progressed. It started wonderfully, and slid like a Himalayan landslide into negativity and caracature. The ending was utterly pointless, and I was left with moments of brilliance that ultimately went nowhere.

Reading The Inheritance of Loss made me uncomfortable. On several occasions I drifted off, thinking about the implications of unfettered immigration both on the quality of life for the immigrants and for people in host countries. The sheer size of India's population is staggering, and its rate of growth can only spill into other countries. From the perspective of Kiran Desai's New York immigrants, Saeed and Biju, the entire world is full of Indians struggling to survive, competing with each other and anyone else for the few available resources. One readily sympathizes with the struggles of Indians both abroad and at home, but just when liberal salve seems about to soothe the reader into thoughts of the romantic poor, we see the rich get disinherited by liberation soldiers, homeless people on the edge of starvation, and the lower class desperate for a step up. Desai's rich characters are never so sympathetic that we make the mistake of thinking they deserve their comfort and wealth, even if they haven't earned the suffering that becomes their lot. More than once I found myself making an inventory of those possessions I could lose without bitterness or decline in the quality of life. It's one thing to acknowledge your good fortune and quite another to part with it in the name of equality. We all inherit loss, however, and the pace of change in Desai's India seems a harbinger of the changes we'll feel in the US.

Luckily, the story isn't all grim. The author's eye for detail is extraordinary: small miracles appear on each page. The field of her prose is so studded with gems that one reads quite slowly. My feelings didn't flow too freely - even though I was fascinated by her close attention to the world, her satirical descriptions of character, the play of ideas, and the relevance of many of the issues - I seldom cared deeply about the fate of the people in the novel. Impending doom made me wary, callous behavior made me judgmental, and the writer's eye was on details both smaller and larger than the emotional life of one or two people. I loved Sai, the young girl at the heart of the story, who seemed to be an innocent version of Ms. Desai. The most emotionally wrenching aspect of the story concerned the judge and his pampered dog, Mutt. Even as I condemned him for abuse toward people, I recognized the pathos in his love for his pet. Those characters who sneer at him for loving an animal more than people may have a righteous point, but his dilemma comes too close to home for readers like me. We're glad just to see that his love has some outlet, which makes the plot all that much harder to bear.

The more I've thought about it, the more I enjoyed this novel. While I was reading I wished for something funnier, lusher, or more romantic, but in the end I was challenged, enlightened, and heartened by the novel. I'm glad to be living in a time when I can depend on Kiran Desai to reveal the world to me.

It is very rarely that one comes across a book which touches upon big issues, in such a richly felt, detailed yet economic manner.

"The Inheritance of Loss",i am sure would be Kiran Desai's breakthrough novel. Set in Kalimpong (that beautiful town in the North East of India)in the mid 80's, this novel follows the journeys(and exiles) of its principal characters.

The retired grumpy judge, Jemubhai Patel, studied in a Victorian England, groomed by the Raj,all of which made him rise above his humble roots, to be a revered, fearsome(and very confused) judge...Sai, his orphaned grand daughter, exiled from the convent to be home schooled (by those delightful Bengali sisters Noni and her sister Lola) discovering the first flush of youth, the first pangs of love, with her Nepalese tutor Gyan...or Biju, the judge's cook's son who is moving from one restaurant job to another, as an illegal immigrant in New York.

All the characters are sharply etched, clearly defined and follow an often unpredictable trajectory of departures and homecomings.

Kiran Desai, has an eye for detail, as is amply evidenced from her settings, from Kalimpong to New York, from Victorian England to Rural Gujarat, from the description of the Marks and Spencer's underwear (note never "lingerie"), to the tense and characteristic atmosphere in the American Embassy at New Delhi, to the impeccable description of "desi" girls in US of A... this book comes alive in these settings.. and the delights of reading, is in discovering one such fully realized situations after another...

For the grand scope and long journeys of the plot, this book is compact and economical, while being infinitely wise. The resolutions of some the characters are sad, (whoever told us that life is fair!)..but the writer allows us to experience the small joys of her characters lives, those moments in which they are truly themselves, berating the virtues of the US over England, living in their "grand civilizations" of "music, alcohol and friendship"

Little wonder then that Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize for this book, making her the youngest women in the history of the prize.

A poem by Jorge Luis Borges, "Boast of Quietness," serves as a fitting epigraph to Karin Desai's acclaimed novel, "The Inheritance of Loss" (2006). Borges's poem speaks of loss, of universal human feelings, and of the difficulties in achieving self-contentment and containment. The poem is told in the first person by a narrator who describes himself as "someone and anyone". It speaks of the "ambitious" whose "day is greedy as a lariat in the air." Borges's narrator observes that "My humanity is the feeling we are all voices of the same poverty." The poem describes the speaker's homeland as "the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, and old sword, the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls". And at the conclusion of the poem, the narrator tries to return home. He "walks slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive."

The themes of loss, ambition, wandering,return, and family pervade Desai's novel. Her story is set in northeast India in 1986 -1987 at the foot of the Himalayas against the backdrop of an uprising of Nepalese and other non-Indians against the Indian government. At the same time, the scene shifts repeatedly to the contemporaneous United States and to flashbacks to other places and times. The many characters in the novel share common parallels of experience which are sometimes too neatly drawn.

Thus the book depicts the young days of a retired elderly Indian judge who studied in England during India's colonial period. Upon the death of his daughter and her husband, he becomes responsible for his granddaughter Sai, whose parents left her in a convent before meeting their deaths in the Soviet Union. At 16, Sai becomes attracted to her tutor, Gyan, age 20 also from a poor background whose parents have high ambitions for him. Gyan is involved in the uprising against the Indians which ultimately destroys their relationship. The Judge has an elderly servant, a cook, who takes a fatherly interest in Sai. The cook too has ambitions for his son Biju. He sends Biju to the United States where he works for years as an illegal in a series of menial jobs in a futile attempt to gain success and happiness. He ultimately abandons this effort and returns to what remains his home, with all its violence, poverty and turmoil.

The novel includes political themes and it comes close at times to social polemic. England's colonial rule of India, the difficulties and corruption that plagued India's path to self-governance, poor relationships with ethnic groups, endemic poverty, and a crassly materialistic United States all receive their due of criticism and more in this story. But on the whole, I found that Desai emphasized the human heart and human fallibility as the chief source of sorrow and grief. Desai's story is full of the consequences of needless and pervasive hate, misunderstanding, dissatisfaction and discontent, and lust for material success in a world that is not one's own. I found the focus of the book predominantly internal and the pervading tone that of compassion.

The story is told in a lyrical descriptive voice. Desai explores the pain wrought by change, with a suggestion of stasis as a way around it. The important themes raised in the book stay mostly on the surface, and the book has an impressionistic, evanescent tone. It has the feel of a sad reverie.

Robin Friedman

The book resonated yet it did not resonate with me. It filled me with a sense of ambivalence. I'll discuss the reasons why it resonated with me as well as why it did not resonate with me.

There are a number of reasons why the book resonated with me. Firstly, I grew up in Kalimpong during the turbulent times of the Gorkhaland agitation and was about the same age as Sai (one of the main characters of the book). Secondly, I also often wondered how brutal violence could coexist with such breath-taking beauty. Lastly, I also felt a deep sense of loss even though I couldn't pinpoint the source of this loss.

On the other hand, the book did not resonate with me for one main reason. Ms Desai does not really understand the true emotions of Nepalis even though she knows Kalimpong well enough to write an engrossing book.

However, this book is neither about Kalimpong nor the Gorkhaland agitation. It is simply about LOSS (the title gives that away) and the realisation of this loss. Sai and Gyan lose their innocence as well as their love amidst the turmoil. The Justice Sahib loses his identity, his family and friends as well as his dog, Mutt in pursuit of an Anglicised lifestyle. The cook loses his son and wife in the service of the judge. Biju (the cook's son) loses everything in pursuit of a better life abroad. Noni and Lola lose their home to squatters. Father Booty loses his dairy farm to the authorities. Uncle Potty loses his inner self to alcohol. The Gorkhaland agitation is merely a catalyst for this loss. Nothing more, nothing less.

I enjoy reading India fiction and thought that this booker prize winner would be a fine book. The characters are unbelievable and you did not get to know them. I couldn't get myself to care about them. I think Desai was trying to copy another booker prize winner, "God of Small Things" by her incoherent writing. From an educational standpoint, it also fell short. Did not go deep enough into the turmoil in that region. However, I did get curious about Sikkim and researched it on my own. I do not recommend this book. For India fiction, try:

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
God of Small Things by Arundati Roy

I've read some really good books that were given the Booker Prize, but this one I just don't get. I initially got it ONLY because of the cover with the golden medallion showing it as a Booker Prize winner. This book was so hard to read. I feel guilty for not finishing it. Maybe I shouldn't write a review until I finish it, but I started it months ago and tried to bargain myself to just read 10 pages a day, and I can't even commit to that.

The jumping around, the lack of a captivating story, the complicated overly written style, and undeveloped characters who you don't feel much for -- it all makes me wonder if the Booker Prize was given more for literary hype and pedigree than quality of writing, in this case. I will try to finish the book, but the fact that this is more of a chore (because I don't want to give up and I want to figure out if I'm missing out on something), rather than a treat makes my one star rating understandable. Perhaps, once finished (though I don't know how long it'll take me, honestly), I'll have a different view of this book. Right now, I just don't get it.

The Inheritance of Loss is somewhat difficult to get into. None of the characters are drawn particularly sympathetically: They are interesting, but they don't engender caring about their fates. And the political setting is tough to grasp without any background. (Most of the book takes place in the 1980s in a town called Kalimpong, on the Indian side of the Himalayas, and the major political backdrop is an insurgency by ethnic Nepalis.) As a result, I was largely ambivalent for the first two-thirds of the book. Desai's prose is often beautiful, but that didn't feel like enough.

However, towards the end of the book, the class tensions rise, whether between the aristocratic, Anglophile judge in Kalimpong and the poor ethnic Nepalis in the same areas or between the judge's cook's son, who is an illegal immigrant in the USA, living in a rat-infested restaurant, and New York investors lunching at steak houses. The book does a better job than most of demonstrating the emotional toll that social inequalities take on people on the top as well as those on the bottom, as well as the natural bitterness that can ensue when fortunes change.

The book is a complete downer, but maybe this is a needed reality check. "As Orhan Pamuk [Turkish winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature] wrote..., people in the West are `scarcely aware of this overwhelming feeling of humiliation that is experienced by most of the world's population,' which `neither magical realistic novels that endow poverty and foolishness with charm nor the exoticism of popular travel literature manages to fathom'" [1].

An equally (or slightly even more) depressing novel also taking place in India and with a more engaging plot is Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. I highly recommend it; its focus is entirely on the plight of the poor, less on inter-class relations per se, but it is excellent.

Meera Simhan reads the audiobook (10 CDs) and does a fine but unexceptional job.

[1] Pankaj Mishra, "Wounded by the West," New York Times, February 12, 2006.

What was the Booker Prize committee thinking!? How The Inheritance of Loss could snatch this prestigious prize last year is a mystery to me. By the middle of the book, none of the characters has really come alive; I could not visualize, much less care for Sai, Gyan, Biju, cook, judge, etc., as they remained faceless, hollow puppets speaking from the shadows. And the landscape, especially the setting in India, failed to register in a lively way; although the first chapter made a bit of an impression on my imagination, the rest just went by in a texture-less blur.

What annoyed me the most was the language, although that's perhaps just what so greatly impressed the judges of the Booker Prize. "Squamous," "brindled," "avuncular," "scropulated," you better keep a dictionary nearby when reading this work. Desai's word-choice is often needlessly far-fetched and "sophisticated" in a pretentious way. I'm reminded of the middle-school essay assignments where students are given a number of difficult vocabulary words that they have to use in their story--well, that's what Desai's book feels like over large stretches. And there are also problems with sense: can sleet be "anxious" (12); can a banana be "slain by heat" (43)? And don't get me started on those verbal gimmicks like the sound of a car horn that is rendered on the page by progressively larger letters--isn't that a bit infantile? The lists and catalogues are overdone, too--is there anybody who hasn't skipped them entirely? It's not that those things are bad in themselves. Similar verbal gymnastics are evident in Roy's The God of Small Things, but there they are functionally and structurally motivated, and they WORK.

The more I read into The Inheritance of Loss, the more I couldn't shake off the feeling that Desai was trying to repeat the amazing feat of The God of Small Things, that brilliant gem of a novel. Compared to Roy's stroke of genius, though, The Inheritance of Loss comes across as an over-ambitious, but under-achieving novel that has been praised far above its merit. Judged from the over-kill of laudatory blurbs that go on for pages at the beginning of the book, this clearly is a reviewer's novel. Desai has hit all the right stops to get contemporary book reviewers excited: globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, insurgency, and so on, but she has forgotten that literature is not only about ideology, issues, and strange new metaphors. Failing to create characters that come alive, failing to create settings and scenes that are evocative and atmospheric, and failing to create a compelling plot--those are grave shortcomings indeed, even for a novel that hasn't won the Booker.