 28 Oct 2005 @ 05:16, by John Ashbaugh
Now I have just finished reading this 600 page novel A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, which I found on the used book shelves of the Goodwill on the Boulevard.
I’ll let the review from Publisher’s Weekly tell you what it’s about, for I just thought to write down a quote from near the end.
“There is no such thing as an uninteresting life.”
. . . .
“One day you must tell me your full and complete story, unabridged and unexpurgated. You must. . . It’s very important.
…
“Why is it important/”
….
“You don’t know? It’s extremely important because it helps to remind yourself of who you are. Then you can go forward, without fear of losing yourself in this ever-changing world.”
. . .
“To share the story redeems everything.”
…
“How?”
…
“How I don’t know exactly. But I feel it here.” He put his hand over his heart.
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From Publishers Weekly
The setting of Mistry's quietly magnificent second novel (after the acclaimed Such a Long Journey) is India in 1975-76, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, defying a court order calling for her resignation, declares a state of emergency and imprisons the parliamentary opposition as well as thousands of students, teachers, trade unionists and journalists. These events, along with the government's forced sterilization campaign, serve as backdrop for an intricate tale of four ordinary people struggling to survive. Naive college student Maneck Kohlah, whose parents' general store is failing, rents a room in the house of Dina Dalal, a 40-ish widowed seamstress. Dina acquires two additional boarders: hapless but enterprising itinerant tailor Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash, whose father, a village untouchable, was murdered as punishment for crossing caste boundaries. With great empathy and wit, the Bombay-born, Toronto-based Mistry evokes the daily heroism of India's working poor, who must cope with corruption, social anarchy and bureaucratic absurdities. Though the sprawling, chatty narrative risks becoming as unwieldy as the lives it so vibrantly depicts, Mistry combines an openness to India's infinite sensory detail with a Dickensian rendering of the effects of poverty, caste, envy, superstition,corruption and bigotry. His vast, wonderfully precise canvas poses, but cannot answer, the riddle of how to transform a corrupt, ailing society into a healthy one.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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