The Inheritance of Loss

I hated it. It was so utterly miserable. Unrelieved misery. I don't do miserable reads any more. My life is too short.

A Bit Difficult to Follow but Hang in There (0/0 people found this helpful)

Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss had me by page 5. The novel is set in New York and in a picturesque Indian town near the India-Nepal border. The main characters are Sai, a 16-year old girl, who lives with her grumpy grandfather, a retired judge in India and Biju, the son of the Judge's cook, who is an illegal immigrant in New York.

The Judge, an impossibly difficult man, was once quite affluent but has fallen on hard times. The villa in which he resides is proof of his former affluence. His cook, on the other hand, has always been poor. His only hope to gain wealth is his son Biju, who has overstayed his tourist visa in the US. Biju, however, goes from bad luck to misfortune in his pursuit of the American dream. He cannot hold down a simple waiting job in New York and therefore has to sleep rough in New York to survive. However, as he navigates the dark underbelly of American urban life, his naive racial prejudices are challenged every step of the way. He meets and befriends a black man (also an illegal) from Tanzania, who seems to have gotten a "hang" of New York.

Meanwhile, back in India, Sai falls desperately in love with her Math teacher who happens to be Nepali. In class (and colour) conscious India, this relationship was doomed from the start. Furthermore, there is increasing social unrest from ethnic Nepalis clamouring for a homeland. Matters reach a head when the Judge is robbed at gun point by two Nepalese insurgents.

The novel concludes with Biju's homecoming. After spending 3 years in the US, the hapless Biju decides to return to India. Before reaching his village, he is robbed of all the money he has saved and has to walk home in a female night dress. Sad but very funny ending.

To be sure, The Inheritance of Loss has its flaws. The Judge, as educated as he is, is a cruel, cold and insecure man. He seems intent on meting out all his feelings of inferiority to everyone else. The Judge changed after 4 years at Cambridge. He seemed to have lost all connection to his native land after a brief spell in the UK. How plausible is this? Sai seems too clever by half for a 16 year old and the cook plays the stereotypical duplicitous and yet fawning `native' servant. Sai's Math teacher seemed to change overnight from a pliant student to a dyed-in-the-wool Nepali Nationalist. The change occurred so suddenly that it is difficult to believe.

However, the pace of the novel is fast and its examination of class in Indian society is poignant. I read the book while on vacation in Cuba and though the beach in Cuba was gorgeous, I could not wait to return to the novel after a dip in the sea. To my mind, the Inheritance of Loss lives up to the Booker Prize much like another favourite of mine, Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things. It deserves my 4 stars.

Disappointing and twee (1/1 people found this helpful)

Like some other reviewers, I read this for book club and in common with most reviewers I struggled to marry the childish writing, overuse of capital letters, non-existent plot, profusion of exclamation marks, gauche caricatures and liberal sprinkling of local Indian words which made no sense even in context, with the fact that it won the Booker Prize. '"Ow ow," Sai said.' '"Drat" he said.' I've read more insightful prose on a cereal packet.

I heartily agree with the reviewer who wondered if a white writer would get away with such slack stereotyping. For example, a minor character returns to the USA after being deported and meets the very same immigration officer who threw him out before. 'Thank heavens we all look the same to them!' he concludes with the casual racism common to almost all of the characters as he is nevertheless allowed back to the USA. 'After we gave you such a good chance!' thinks an American employer when an illegal Indian worker says he is leaving. Please - real people are far less self-absorbed than Desai seems to think.

Here is a tale where every character has inherited not loss but infantile, petty prejudice about everyone they encounter. Desai has described a world I find hard to recognise, where rich and poor are both preoccupied with their standing in the world and obsessed with passage to the USA, where what the neighbours think of you really is the only important thing to worry about. Desai seeks to create barriers of class, education, race, birth place, religion - you name it, she'll demonstrate an irreconcilable 'them and us' self-importance - whereas I find real people are just not that concerned about which school you went to, your skin colour or who your parents are. Disappointingly for this self-appointed chronicler of modern global life, most people are far too busy simply going about their own lives to indulge in the pompous categorising of their fellow human beings that Desai seems fascinated with.

I feel like I've read this book dozens of times already, and better - sprawling epic over several generations and continents where all characters are forced to re-examine their own history, told in that oh so fashionable, choppy, non-chronological way. This is hardly the worst book I ever read but its self-conscious, crude analysis of the human condition belongs in the student newspaper, not with the cachet of the Booker Prize.

Beautifully written though thin on plot (0/1 people found this helpful)

Beautiful writing lifts the simple plot of this novel into a higher league. Desai has a lovely turn of phrase and the narrative is full of little details and observations. It depicts a motley collection of characters living in a small community in India, whose lives are affected by the Gorkha uprising of the 1980s.

A secondary thread of the story follows a young Indian illegal immigrant in America, the son of one of the characters back in India. Although well written, it seemed a little out of place. The book either needed to integrate this more with the rest of the story, perhaps by focussing on it more, or drop it altogether. It seemed like the author wanted to write about the experiences of such a character, but didn't want a whole novel on the subject so slotted it into this one.

I found it hard to sympathise with some of the characters, though the portrayal of a community affected by riots and civil unrest was well done. Really, this book is better in its small details than as a whole. The overarching plot is thin and the ending rather weak and inconclusive, but it's still a pleasure to read because of the quality of it's writing.

Boring (0/2 people found this helpful)

Probably the least entertaining book I have ever read (and I read about 4 books a week). Nothing happened. Complete waste of time reading it.

The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai

Reader Reviews:

A thoroughly miserable read (0/0 people found this helpful)

A Bit Difficult to Follow but Hang in There (0/0 people found this helpful)

Disappointing and twee (1/1 people found this helpful)

Beautifully written though thin on plot (0/1 people found this helpful)

Boring (0/2 people found this helpful)

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