By: Kiran Desai Publisher: Grove Press Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Grove Press Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 384 Publication Date: August 29, 2006
Published to extraordinary acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. She illuminates the pain of exile and the ambiguities of postcolonialism with a tapestry of colorful characters: an embittered old judge; Sai, his sixteen-year-old orphaned granddaughter; a chatty cook; and the cook’s son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one miserable New York restaurant to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai’s new-sprung romance with her handsome tutor, their lives descend into chaos. The cook witnesses India’s hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge revisits his past and his role in Sai and Biju’s intertwining lives. A story of depth and emotion, hilarity and imagination, The Inheritance of Loss tells a story of love, family, and loss.
Yuk Like "reading" a slow train wreck - achingly dull and painful at the same time. There is no effort to make the reader care about any of the characters - do you really want to feel only alternating disdain and pity all the way through any book? Surely that could not have been the writer's intention?
An "almost good" book I find it hard to believe that this book won awards. There was way too much detail and not enough of anything else. It was kind of a stream of consiousness style, but it wasn't the character's minds we were inside of, it was the author-and she talks too much about nothing. I thought it would be interesting because of the setting and historical period which I was anxious to learn about, but I still don't know anything. I never even knew what year it was until chapter 42-and that was only the year for one of the generational stories that is told. It jumped around way too much. The lines across the page that generally indicate a skip in time or place were used totally arbitrarily. I don't know why they were even there. I found the book annoying and difficult to read. I gave 2 stars because there were places that the detailed, descriptive writing resonated with me and evoked an emotional response, but mostly I found the characters not filled out enough to relate to. I never read a more hopeless book in my life and I guess why I gave the stars because I was left with the feeling of hopelessness of a colonial society that aspires to be like someone else and can't be itself.
Prizes are just politics Heartbreaking. What's gone wrong? Winner, amomg others, of the Man Booker prize and the National Book Critics Circle award. What are these boys and girls reading? What criteria do they use to award prizes? Oh, I'm sorry. The authos is woman, young, and Indian (and cute), so she MUST be good. and her book is about the evils of colonialism and the sufferings of migrants, so it is good by decree. Sorry, I know I'm going to get lots of negative votes, but literary prizes nowadays are only politics. Aesthetic merit, in this case literary, is totally absent from judges' decisions. It is not how the book is written, it is who the author is and his or her politics or background. This lazy piece of politics is about a young Indian orphan who lives with her mean grandfather and the cook, right at the feet of the Himalayas. The other plot is about the experiences as illegal migrant to the US of the cook's son. According to the back cover, the sordid and commonplace adventures of this guy "Illuminate on the consequences of Colonialism". Really. Miss Novelist writes as if she were about to send a telegram, because she has little talent. The characters are shallow as shallow can be, and extremely unlikable and uninteresting. Ms. Desai is obsessed with phaeces, vomit, and other bodily fluids. I confess I couldn't finish it. I have no time for politically correct garbage when there are so mnay works of genius out there.
Couldn't finish it 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 writing style, and undeveloped characters who you don't feel much for all make me wonder if the Booker Prize was given more out of 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.
Life Is That Which Drifts Away One of the most beautifully authentic books I've ever read, Desai's THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS is also one of the grimmest. It reminds me very much of a luscious nightmare, one which you awake from remembering not stories or events, but a strange, unshakable tone or hue. You couldn't say, upon waking, what has you so disturbed, but you can say that it is heartbreaking -- even distressing -- in the way of all truly gorgeous things.
Desai has not written a story here. Not at all. Instead, she has shaped and colored four perfect lights. One light shines on Jemubhai Patel, a retired Indian judge steeped in a borrowed British heritage, his closest friend a dog named Mutt. Another light illuminates Sai, Patel's granddaughter, an orphaned transplant from the muddy half-world that exists at the borders between culture and indoctrination. The final two lights spread the hem of their glow around the judge's twitchy, superstitious cook, and Biju, the cook's son, now scrabbling through the grimy microcosm that (just barely) houses America's lowest working class.
These lights have fuzzy edges, and where they overlap, the colors are almost indescribable. The connections between these four people aren't quite so remarkable as the way they are described. The novel's larger themes -- colonialism, cultural disaffection, the clockwork precision of tyranny, unrest, and rebellion -- are treated with a plain-faced simplicity, Desai's real talents aimed more at the individuals who must learn how to deal with the sometimes invisible ripples of politics and passion.
Chapter Twenty-Eight begins, "The judge was thinking of his hate." For many, this will be a novel of hate, a book of tiresome gloom, and I won't say that's not true on more than one level. Life (and literature even more so) is about, if anything, conflict and entropy. The second law of thermodynamics just as easily applies to hearts and souls as it does to kinetic energy, and Desai's book deals with all of those things with a prose that is both dark and crystalline.
Because Desai is more concerned with a tableau than with a plot, because her lights illuminate a stage and not a story, many might find the book to be a gorgeous but meandering mess. And with "stories" of this type, it's difficult to find an ending that is anything but abortive. It took Desai seven years to write this novel, and that's just as evident in her fluid narrative technique as it is in her denoument. Like a child releasing a helium-filled balloon, this novel doesn't so much end as just drift away. A fittingly torturous finale to a book of so much hubris and humanity, it may not be as satisfying as the rest of the book, but it is at least as touching, and certainly as brilliant.
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