| Author: |
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Vikram Seth
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| Title: |
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A Suitable Boy: Novel, A |
| Moochable copies: |
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No copies available |
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| Recommended: |
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| Topics: |
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| Published in: |
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English |
| Binding: |
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Paperback |
| Pages: |
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1488 |
| Date: |
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1994-04-13 |
| ISBN: |
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0060925000 |
| Publisher: |
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HarperPerennial |
| Weight: |
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0.79 pounds |
| Size: |
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1.98 x 5.31 x 8.0 inches |
| Edition: |
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1st |
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| Description: |
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Product Description
Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: the tale of Lata's--and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra's--attempts to find a suitable boy for Lata, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in the early 1950s in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.
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| Reviews: |
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Marianne (Australia) (2012/01/22):
A Suitable Boy is the second novel by Vikram Seth. It is the story of Lata Mehra and her mother Mrs Rupa Mehra (Ma to her friends), who is intent on finding for her daughter “a suitable boy”. It is essentially a story of love and family, but set in the background of immediate post-partition India, the early ‘50s, and portrays vividly the tensions between races, classes, castes and religions at a time when the newly independent country was struggling to deal with the challenges of famine, mass poverty and uncertainty about its future. Among the many prospects for Lata are: the love match, the (Muslim) Kabir, son of a mathematics professor, whom Ma is decidedly against; the indolent poet Amit, with whom Ma is also unhappy; and the English-educated shoe businessman, Haresh, who seems ideal to Ma, although Lata is less than convinced.
When the reader first picks up this brick (it’s almost 1500 pages and Seth even jokes in his Word of Thanks that it may cause wrist injury!), it may seem a daunting prospect, but the writing style makes it surprisingly easy to read. There are a lot of characters, but the family trees kindly provided at the beginning help to keep track of them. This book has humour, horror and heartache; there is tragedy and triumph, passion and politics, violence and victims, grief and guilt; Seth’s depiction of the Indian way of life at this time in her history is interesting and informative. This novel has an imaginative plot, and a range of fascinating characters: the emotional Ma; the arrogant Arun; the matter-of-fact Haresh; the precocious Aparna; the intelligent Bhaskar; the absent-minded Dr Durrani; the insouciant Chatterjis with their flippant couplets. Seth is a gifted poet and another delightful touch is that the Word of Thanks is in verse and the Chapter (Part) Headings are rhyming couplets. This novel had me laughing out loud many times, but moved me to tears more than once, as well. It may have taken me almost 2 weeks to read it, but I loved it, and I look forward to the imminent (2013?) “A Suitable Girl”.
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| URL: |
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http://bookmooch.com/0060925000 |
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