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lagarrett's review against another edition
4.0
Bought this at a great second-hand bookstore: Mari's Books on Highway 101 in Yachats OR. Wonderful use of the English language. With an overlay of the rhythms of the subcontinent. Most of the stories revolve around culture - how being brought up in one culture and educated in another leaves you never really fitting in anywhere - and about how people want to fit in and the lengths they will go to in order to seem to fit in. Read the book for the language, the characters and the stories.
rdaisygal's review against another edition
3.0
I was really into this book for a while. I loved the writing style and the characters, but it felt as if the author didn't know how to finish the book, so she just stopped writing. No ending, no conclusion, no hint of resolution.
marigold_bookshelf's review against another edition
2.0
I’ve recently re-read Kira Desai’s 2006 Booker winning novel The Inheritance of Loss, for a Spanish literary chat, and I was left searching for an answer when asked whether I actually liked the novel. It is, without doubt, a fine literary achievement, a complex novel that escapes categorisation, set in the remote Himalayan region of Kalimpong, and which deals with important aspects of post-colonial Indian life and displacement. But it is as desolate as it is evocative, often entirely lacking in hope.
Sai, a young orphaned woman, moves into the home of her maternal grandfather, the retired judge Jemubahai who is an embittered and generally nasty old man, having never recovered from his experience as a student of law in England. He is too Indian to be British, too proudly English to be at home in his native India. He lives with his English bred dog Mutt, and his impoverished cook whose son, Biju, is struggling to scrape a living together as an illegal immigrant in the United States. The novel constantly switches attention from Sai in Kalimpong to Biju in New York.
Sai falls in love for the first time, with her Nepalese tutor Gyan, whose affection seems to be reciprocated until he joins the Nepalese insurgency movement, after which he betrays her by leading his fellow militants to attack and loot the Judge’s house. The insurgents cause further disruption to their sadly comical middle-class neighbours, sisters Noni and Lola whose nostalgia for colonial life is caricaturised by their love of English jam and Marks and Spencer´s underwear, and the inebriated Uncle Potty who appears to be in a gay relationship with the Swiss priest and cheesemaker Father Booty.
Kiran Desai narrates the story with a brutal lack of sentimentality, leaving bare the harshness of the landscape and the lives of its inhabitants. It is not a book I managed to love, but fully deserves to be read and re-read – if that makes sense!
Sai, a young orphaned woman, moves into the home of her maternal grandfather, the retired judge Jemubahai who is an embittered and generally nasty old man, having never recovered from his experience as a student of law in England. He is too Indian to be British, too proudly English to be at home in his native India. He lives with his English bred dog Mutt, and his impoverished cook whose son, Biju, is struggling to scrape a living together as an illegal immigrant in the United States. The novel constantly switches attention from Sai in Kalimpong to Biju in New York.
Sai falls in love for the first time, with her Nepalese tutor Gyan, whose affection seems to be reciprocated until he joins the Nepalese insurgency movement, after which he betrays her by leading his fellow militants to attack and loot the Judge’s house. The insurgents cause further disruption to their sadly comical middle-class neighbours, sisters Noni and Lola whose nostalgia for colonial life is caricaturised by their love of English jam and Marks and Spencer´s underwear, and the inebriated Uncle Potty who appears to be in a gay relationship with the Swiss priest and cheesemaker Father Booty.
Kiran Desai narrates the story with a brutal lack of sentimentality, leaving bare the harshness of the landscape and the lives of its inhabitants. It is not a book I managed to love, but fully deserves to be read and re-read – if that makes sense!
glennab28's review against another edition
3.0
this book was hard to characterize. the story was scattered but, at times, beautifully written. despite switching between settings and time periods (seemingly) at random, there were occasional poignant moments. desai does a nice job capturing some of the idiosyncrasies and ironies of what it is to be indian in different places, times and ages. though more often bleak, the last page does give some glimmer of hope, however faint.
*oh, and since I listened to some of this book in audio form, a word about the reader. she was incredible! switching between accents and intonations from zanzibari to nepalese to scottish with such aplomb. incredible.
*oh, and since I listened to some of this book in audio form, a word about the reader. she was incredible! switching between accents and intonations from zanzibari to nepalese to scottish with such aplomb. incredible.
sillylittlefox's review against another edition
2.0
I started reading this early in the summer, and damn, I just can't make myself pick it up again. This book is depressing and disturbing, though not in the good ways that often make me want to continue reading. The author does not make me want to find out what happens to the characters, and the characters themselves are really not that interesting anyway. I often find stories that follow the colonial legacies interesting and worth reading to see how cultures deal with the ravages of having been colonized, but this book just felt sorry for itself without doing much else. Read [book: Wide Sargasso Sea], or [book: The White Tiger], or any number of other texts that explore colonialism, but manage to do so in interesting and stimulating ways.
brodie_mckenna's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
tense
2.75
Both sad and boring at the same time
zooniareader's review against another edition
4.0
Beautiful writing...some of the descriptions made me want to purr they were so seamless and insightful. I also liked the complicated psychological issues that were so dead-on and universally felt.
ayohaitch's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
superjanelee's review against another edition
2.0
This story...I was very excited about reading it, but had a really hard time getting through to the end. I'm not sure if it was lack of strength in the story, or if I just had a terrible time with the author's writing style. Was very disappointed with this award winning book...