January 03, 2006
'The Inheritance of Loss'Literature
Quickie book review I’m-on-the-road edition
Kiran Desais new book, The Inheritance Of Loss, soft-launched last month, and I picked up a copy at Barnes & Noble. Its a good tale with a globalization undercurrent connecting IndiaŽs Nepal border with New York City.
Her previous book, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was a well-written magically realist vignette on the line between a novel and a novella. Despite the fruitarian title, it was excellent. Her new one is far more ambitious. Rushdie has a highly complimentary but generic blurb on the back of the new one, which I take to mean he hasn’t read the new one yet. Only having read her mom Anita Desai’s Booker-nominated work Fasting, Feasting so far, Id say I enjoy her writing more than her mothers (whose work I also enjoy).
She also gets in a bunch of wicked jabs at non-vegetarians, Brits, upper-class New Yorkers, 2nd genners and so on, shes not playing safe here. Its mutinous that way, just like The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories by Lavanya Sankaran.
(Desai is a far better show-not-tell writer I liked Carpet because its sassy, and I could completely relate to all the jabs at 2nd gen dating; itŽs like an American version of Life Isnt All Ha Ha Hee Hee. Also, sheŽs an ex-WSJer and seems to be a conservative, which I mention only to boost sales in the Vinod - Razib segment. SankaranŽs biggest f*-you goes out to Mumbaikars who look down on Bangalore, but sheŽs riding the outsourcing publicity wave, so it isn’t quite the declaration of independence it seems.)
My complaints:
- The usual gender one I often like male authors better, they move plot faster (Vikram Chandra, Rushdie); this book lacks motion, and is sometimes PG-rated where it should be R (a scene where an auntie receives the mildest of insults from a guerilla chieftain) and R where it should be PG (explicit booger jokes)
- Like just about all American 2nd genners, the thrust of the story focuses on the motherland on the assumption that thats the biggest market; shes borderline 1-1.5 gen, so she has a small excuse
- Which editor allowed through the hundreds of sequential question marks and exclamation points???!!! Makes the editing look amateur and is a pain to read.
Otherwise, highly recommended. Flippant, funny and mutinous as all hell. Sometimes a treatise rather than a novel, but much less so than Carpet, and that makes it all the more entertaining— frankly, there’s a lot to be said.
Desai is reading in Manhattan Feb. 1 at the Rubin Museum of Art, a major Himalayan art collection (via SAJA).
manish on January 3, 2006 11:59 AM in Literature · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
¤ Ultrabrown said: Desai, Murr nominated for Booker
fruitarian
You can say that again. It took the author but 3.5 pages to come to 'fenugreek and camel milk' in Guava Orchard. Camel milk? My hump!
the book has gotten several reviews... saw it in "0" magazine and "People" as well... so it is hopefully going to do well... bringing the brownies out more on the forefront....hmm..maybe will pick it up soon...
Yeah, I remember reading HITGO many moons ago. It was light, mildly humorous, and not even kind of like Mommy's work. I have to pick this one up.
Hey, is there an SA Book Club in the Bay Area that I'm not aware of? Any recommendations, anyone?
"Hey, is there an SA Book Club in the Bay Area"
Contact DesiLit (www.desilit.org). They have a Bay area chapter.
Based on the fact that I read a review of the new book in the Economist Magaine, maybe it won't do so well!
How Entertaing a read it is decides the success of any work of art or literature (novels included) and not the Prizes the work managed to win through shining by comparison.
If the novel is not fast paced, it is most probably for leisurely readers who wait for the golden pots at the end of the rainbows.
Style & substance & the worth can be known only after we finish reading the novel.
Let's hope for the best to the Novelist, Kiran!
it the best blog, which I saw, thank you and good luck!
The book "...just happened to stumble into the stereotype; [it] was the genuine thing that just happened to be the cliche...." [pg297] in indo-english lit.
