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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
This book was a great read. Loved the author's prose and how each character came full circle. Very heartbreaking at various moments.
Mistry is a masterful storyteller, the lives he depicts jumping out of the pages to take residence inside your head, carrying on the business of living in its most mundane and simultaneously tragic aspect - "a roiling swirl of humanity". Mistry also has a talent for making his story a little too full of pathos. I'm glad I took my time with this book because by the end the pathos had become unbearable. And yet in the end, Mistry asserts time and again, it all stands on a fine balance between hope and despair. That is the nature of life.
All lives for Mistry exist in a precarious balance also in the sense that despite each being shaped by different ethos and prejudices they can all be brought together. And that is just what Mistry does in this book, bringing together the most unlikely people to come together during the time of Emergency in India, and in doing that, knowing full well that there is never just one truth to anything, Mistry weaves a tale which looks at every truth that can be brought under the book’s scope.
In doing this The Fine Balance seems to me to be illustrating what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the 'dialogical principle' (used for Dostoevsky and later thought inherent to all novels as compared to other forms of literature) in which many different, often contradictory, voices expressing different ideological positions and having their own perspectives, all equally valid and having their own narrative weight within the novel, are set in play, not in a single objective world, held together by the author's voice, but in one where there is a plurality of consciousnesses, each with its own world. The reader does not see a single reality presented by the author, but rather, how reality appears to each character. For Bakhtin, and also seemingly for Mistry, because many standpoints exist, truth requires many incommensurable voices. There is no single meaning to be found in the world, but a vast multitude of contesting meanings that exist in a fine balance with each other.
Mistry's book, like all postcolonial fiction, also tends to juxtapose and even merge the private and the political. The point is that the political is inextricably tied up with the private, and the political in Mistry's writing never overshadows the private, which, though it is shaped by the political, has a life of its own. The lives of the ordinary men and women take precedence in Mistry, driving his narrative which looks at everything from the lens of the private sphere.
All that said, I should mention that reading Mistry can be hard. I'm referring again to the pathos which really is unrelenting and is accompanied in places by a shocking starkness and honesty. It will jolt you. It will make you uncomfortable. But I suppose that's what great books do, isn't it?
I will end the review with the epigraph Mistry chooses for the book, which describes it perfectly.
“Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot
All lives for Mistry exist in a precarious balance also in the sense that despite each being shaped by different ethos and prejudices they can all be brought together. And that is just what Mistry does in this book, bringing together the most unlikely people to come together during the time of Emergency in India, and in doing that, knowing full well that there is never just one truth to anything, Mistry weaves a tale which looks at every truth that can be brought under the book’s scope.
In doing this The Fine Balance seems to me to be illustrating what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the 'dialogical principle' (used for Dostoevsky and later thought inherent to all novels as compared to other forms of literature) in which many different, often contradictory, voices expressing different ideological positions and having their own perspectives, all equally valid and having their own narrative weight within the novel, are set in play, not in a single objective world, held together by the author's voice, but in one where there is a plurality of consciousnesses, each with its own world. The reader does not see a single reality presented by the author, but rather, how reality appears to each character. For Bakhtin, and also seemingly for Mistry, because many standpoints exist, truth requires many incommensurable voices. There is no single meaning to be found in the world, but a vast multitude of contesting meanings that exist in a fine balance with each other.
Mistry's book, like all postcolonial fiction, also tends to juxtapose and even merge the private and the political. The point is that the political is inextricably tied up with the private, and the political in Mistry's writing never overshadows the private, which, though it is shaped by the political, has a life of its own. The lives of the ordinary men and women take precedence in Mistry, driving his narrative which looks at everything from the lens of the private sphere.
All that said, I should mention that reading Mistry can be hard. I'm referring again to the pathos which really is unrelenting and is accompanied in places by a shocking starkness and honesty. It will jolt you. It will make you uncomfortable. But I suppose that's what great books do, isn't it?
I will end the review with the epigraph Mistry chooses for the book, which describes it perfectly.
“Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot
One of the few books I've ever read I wished was longer (and it's already really long!).
The perfect book. Characters, setting, theme, plot, pacing, the beauty of the writing itself. Mistry wrote a masterpiece.
The perfect book. Characters, setting, theme, plot, pacing, the beauty of the writing itself. Mistry wrote a masterpiece.
This is a brick. It’s long. But it’s worth it. I learned so much about India’s history that it broke my heart. The ending isn’t what I wanted. But...
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Very interesting book. It's set in India in the 1970's & I before reading I really didn't know what the situation was like at that time. Enjoyed the book immensely.
The writing and character development in this book are wonderful, however, the story was dull and depressing.
i couldn't finish it. a friend told me that something really sad happens at the end and after reading 3/4ths of the novel... with all the horrible things that happen in the first 3/4ths, i couldn't stand the suspense and stopped reading. that may make me a wiener, but so be it.