Finishing A Most Suitable Book
Last night I finally finished Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. This 1474-page behemoth was the longest novel ever published in English back in 1993 when it came out. The book is absolutely adored by a friend of a friend of mine, and the intensity of the reverence for it piqued my curiosity to the point where I decided I had to read it. It was over two months ago that I began, and it took me longer to finish than I expected it to.
Carrying the book around for so long was certainly an attention-getter: a mid-40's Indian woman at an airport told me she quit reading it because it was "much too detailed", while a grandmotherly white woman asked me on an airplane, "What on earth is that book you're reading? I've never seen such a huge book!", and lots of other people have commented on how unbelievably long and seemingly insurmountable the book appears to be. Seth even pokes fun at himself, when he has a woman ask Amit, an author:
"Why, then, is it rumoured that your forthcoming novel ... is to be so long? More than a thousand pages!" she exclaimed reproachfully, as if he were personally responsible for the nervous exhaustion of some future dissertationist.
"Oh, I don't know how it grew to be so long," said Amit. "I'm very undisciplined. But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad, they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends."
In short, I absolutely loved this book. The book chronicles the lives of four Indian families in the early 1950's who are related by marriage and friendship. It's an extremely engrossing, detailed, moving story that attempts (and succeeds) to address the enormous issues of religion, caste, politics, and marriage in Indian society a few years after independence. Seth creates a ficticious state called Purva Pradesh in which the story mostly takes place, and populates it with a huge cast of characters, all of whom are given sufficient time to develop their own personalities and go through unique but often inter-related experiences. It sounds cliche, but I was genuinely moved to sadness, surprise, disgust, regret, and out-loud laughter at different times by the characters.
Having spent over two months with this book, I had begun to feel that I was part of these peoples' lives - or them of mine. I met the members of the Kapoor, Mehra, Khan and Chatterji clans - Pran, Savita, Maan, Varun, Veena, Kedernath, Bhaskar, Mr. & Mrs. Mahesh Kapoor, Rupa, Lata, Arun, Meenakshi, Aparna, Dr. Kishen Chand Seth, Kakoli, Tapan, Dipankar, Amit, the Nawab Sahib, Firoz, Imtiaz, Saeeda Bai, Tasneem, Bibbo - and an equal number of other characters who played pivotal roles: Jawaharlal Nehru, S.S. Sharma, L.N. Agarwal, Rasheed, Baba, Sunil, Haresh, Malati, Kalpana, and Kabir among others.
I found the book absolutely fascinating and very well written, and am genuinely sad to be done with it. The ending left a bit to be desired though, as it seemed that all the loose ends were neatly tied up within a few short pages. And the last page was a disappointment to me, as it seemed anti-climactic and irrelevant. But these minor flaws did not detract from the other 1450 (!) pages that kept me continually wondering what would happen next.
Surprisingly, other than the physical pain from holding such a heavy book for long periods of time, the actual length of the book didn't ever feel overdone, or excessively wordy. Every passage had it's place, and I can't think of a single section that seemed unnecessary.
After hearing such profuse praise for the book, I think I understand what all the affection and fondness is about and why it has such deep meaning for some people, and to the extent that I can empathize with a culture that I am pretty familiar with but is not my own, I feel it now too. It's definitely one of the best novels I've ever read.
Carrying the book around for so long was certainly an attention-getter: a mid-40's Indian woman at an airport told me she quit reading it because it was "much too detailed", while a grandmotherly white woman asked me on an airplane, "What on earth is that book you're reading? I've never seen such a huge book!", and lots of other people have commented on how unbelievably long and seemingly insurmountable the book appears to be. Seth even pokes fun at himself, when he has a woman ask Amit, an author:
"Why, then, is it rumoured that your forthcoming novel ... is to be so long? More than a thousand pages!" she exclaimed reproachfully, as if he were personally responsible for the nervous exhaustion of some future dissertationist.
"Oh, I don't know how it grew to be so long," said Amit. "I'm very undisciplined. But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad, they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends."
In short, I absolutely loved this book. The book chronicles the lives of four Indian families in the early 1950's who are related by marriage and friendship. It's an extremely engrossing, detailed, moving story that attempts (and succeeds) to address the enormous issues of religion, caste, politics, and marriage in Indian society a few years after independence. Seth creates a ficticious state called Purva Pradesh in which the story mostly takes place, and populates it with a huge cast of characters, all of whom are given sufficient time to develop their own personalities and go through unique but often inter-related experiences. It sounds cliche, but I was genuinely moved to sadness, surprise, disgust, regret, and out-loud laughter at different times by the characters.
Having spent over two months with this book, I had begun to feel that I was part of these peoples' lives - or them of mine. I met the members of the Kapoor, Mehra, Khan and Chatterji clans - Pran, Savita, Maan, Varun, Veena, Kedernath, Bhaskar, Mr. & Mrs. Mahesh Kapoor, Rupa, Lata, Arun, Meenakshi, Aparna, Dr. Kishen Chand Seth, Kakoli, Tapan, Dipankar, Amit, the Nawab Sahib, Firoz, Imtiaz, Saeeda Bai, Tasneem, Bibbo - and an equal number of other characters who played pivotal roles: Jawaharlal Nehru, S.S. Sharma, L.N. Agarwal, Rasheed, Baba, Sunil, Haresh, Malati, Kalpana, and Kabir among others.
I found the book absolutely fascinating and very well written, and am genuinely sad to be done with it. The ending left a bit to be desired though, as it seemed that all the loose ends were neatly tied up within a few short pages. And the last page was a disappointment to me, as it seemed anti-climactic and irrelevant. But these minor flaws did not detract from the other 1450 (!) pages that kept me continually wondering what would happen next.
Surprisingly, other than the physical pain from holding such a heavy book for long periods of time, the actual length of the book didn't ever feel overdone, or excessively wordy. Every passage had it's place, and I can't think of a single section that seemed unnecessary.
After hearing such profuse praise for the book, I think I understand what all the affection and fondness is about and why it has such deep meaning for some people, and to the extent that I can empathize with a culture that I am pretty familiar with but is not my own, I feel it now too. It's definitely one of the best novels I've ever read.
posted by GregP at 3:58 PM
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