26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful potrayal of multiple dimensions of life in Bombay, March 31, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Swimming Lessons: and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag (Paperback)
Rohinton Mistry's short stories are brilliant. Written in simple English without any pretentious embellishments, these stories vividly bring to life the characters described. Being an Indian myself and having moved to the US in the last few years, his two stories about an Indian youth moving to Canada seemed very beleivable and accurate representation. I would be surprised if these stories are not based on someone the author knows / has heard about -although I believe that Mistry also writes stories using news articles he reads in Indian newpapers these stories seem too real for the author not to have known someone like the characters he describes.
Reading the book made me feel as if the author were telling the story himself..in a very modest tone..yet the stories show a tremendous understanding of human character and human life. Mistry realizes that small and almost non-significant incidences are the heart of life in the apartments in India. Fortunately, in this book, he does not dwell on the fact that life in a third-world country can be tough. His tone is optimistic and non-judgemental - sometimes humurous - and sometimes a little serious.
The stories made my hair stand out. I would recommend it highly
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
CLASSY WORK OF A MINIATURIST, HARDLY READS LIKE A DEBUT!, July 19, 2004
This review is from: Swimming Lessons: and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag (Paperback)
And I thought that "A Fine Balance" was Rohinton's best! Yet again, I find myself speechless in my admiration for his astute command of language. His precise and inventive prose never quits until he has portrayed an image in sentences. Images that I grew up with myself but never quite would have thought of expressing in the grippingly sensitive way he can.
Swimming Lessons is a collection of such reminiscences from the author's childhood in a Parsi neighborhood in suburban middle-class Bombay. The setting itself may be confined to a particular community, but his compassionate brush carves such a wide sweep of the minutest of human emotions that the sheer force of this book is not in its plot or setting, but in its recognition of the universal bounty of life.
Our quirky residents of 'Firozsha Baag' have every reason to be disconcerted and baffled with their difficult lives. The walls of their building complex are coming apart. Washroom flushes don't work. One family has the refrigerator that's shared by the entire colony, and another has the common telephone. Their lives are marred by simple everyday things, innocent infatuations, unconfessed fantasies, fatal jealousies, neighborhood bullies, petty thefts, memory lapses, shared newspapers, cultural/generational clashes, etc etc.
Yet, beneath this veneer of this seeming hardships glimmers a subtle undercurrent of hope and happiness, of a bond that does not need expressing in the common social forms.
The high praise that Mistry has garnered is not exaggerated. The man has a disarming sense of humor and a lingering sense of what makes literature great. I laughed, I cried, I sat back and pondered. I was especially stirred by the moving story "Of White Hairs and Cricket", and the cover story, which is saved for the last, "Swimming Pools."
Couldn't recommend this brilliant compilation highly enough. It hardly reads like a debut.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tales from Firozeshah baag, May 7, 2000
This review is from: Swimming Lessons: and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag (Paperback)
I am an Indian reader and have spent the first thirty years of my life in there. I read Mistry's books in reverse order, having become aware of him first through Fine Balance, then Such a Long Journey, and last the short stories of Ferozeshah baag.I enjoyed his short stories best. They have a clarity and freshness utterly lacking in the contrived reality of Fine Balance. Long journey also lost me when he went on about the RAW (intelligence forces of GOvt of India) -it became bizarre.I would love it if he told us more of the characters from the baag.They are honest, real and very comapassionately treated. His novels are commendable for their humanistic urges, but fail artistically and sound artificial. He is still one of the most readable and direct Indian writer in English, with no pretensions or literary pirouetting. And his descriptions of India are accurate.
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