Customer Reviews

Swimming Lessons: and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
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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

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.

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.

Mistry shows the world once again why he is one of the treasures of world literature. "Swimming Lessons", although taking place entirely in an apartment block in Bombay offers characters, stories, and sentiments that everyone can appreciate. These stories are timeless and can communicate their emotions even to those of us who have never been to India. Filled with characters who are both absurd and familiar (I think we've all known a Rustomji the Curmudgeon in our time) you cannot but help feel compelled and connected with each of their lives. I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a good story.

A collection of interwoven tales told from the perspective of the different residents of Ferozsha Baag, an apartment building in Bombay. All the stories are good; some are outstanding. In particular, the story of the son who emigrates to Canada to become a writer has a uniquely autobiographical feel to it. =)

This collection is better than either of his novels, it stays clear of the overwriting and preachiness of novels like A Fine Balance. The charcters are well drawn out, more complex than the simple "good" people that I kind of tired of in the novel. Certain images, like unwrapping and cracking a cricket bat, parading a thief, cursing out people at the bus, are written descriptively with Mistry's characteristic humour and sympathy. The last story about Canada is also great, and the real "tales" like Squatter are also funny. The Collectors may have been my favorite story, and there is interesting intensely sexually frustrating imagery which is very sublime and hidden in these stories of adolescents in the complex. Sometimes its out in the open. Overall, Mistry is a very realist writer and does best when he stays away from being judgemental, when he creates characters that I imagine are from his life, not from his research. I enjoyed this book thoroughly.

I read A Fine Balance about a year ago and loved it. I just finished Swimming Lessons and I'm going out to buy Family Matters right now. He writes so beautifully and descriptively that you feel that you lived alongside the characters in his books.He's my favorite author right now.

Misty shows his brilliance in revealing the engaging lives of fascinating characters. His stories hint at the larger world of responsibility, family bonds and self-discovery, while his characters push ahead in their quirky everyday lives in Firozsha Baag. And Mistry's narrating character of Kersi, an immigrant Parsi like himself, reflecting on the extraordinary lives of ordinary people in his native Bombay, allows the reader to reflect upon his own relationships with friends, neighbors and family with more sympathy and caring. Mistry fans will enjoy this book as well as his two novels and the film version of Such A Long Journey.

What a fabulous story teller Mistry is! I could not put this book down. It was written with humour, insight and sensitivity. The characters are so developed, the stories so compelling I immediately searched out his other works and I wasn't disappointed!

"Swimming Lessons", a short story collection, may be Mistry's earliest published work. He of course wrote the awesome "A Fine Balance", a panoramic look at life in India circa 1975. "Lessons" is set in about the same time period and chronicles the life experiences of middle-class Indians from a particular apartment complex. Major characters in one story show up as minor characters in other stories, giving the book a novelistic feel. Emigration, experienced directly by Mistry in his early 20's as he moved to Canada, is a major theme of the book. The story "Squatters", contains a "story inside the story" that affect your thinking about the trials of emigration (as it relates to bodily functions) for a long time. Those who know Mistry will enjoy this look at his early writing. Newcomers to Mistry might enjoy the short story form as an intro before tackling the epic "A Fine Balance."