The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
The rain on Sunday 23rd and Monday 24th made me abandon any plans for last minute market, and gave me an excuse to read out The Inheritance of Loss. I have had this book on my shelf for about three years.
The story is about Sai, a 17 year old living with her grandfather, a retired Judge in an old house in Kalimpong. The story is also about the judge, his neighbours, the cook, the cook's son Birju trying to hustle a living with other illegal immigrants in New York. The story is about Gyan, caught up in a Gorkha revolution, and about a whole lot of other people who seem hopeless in their powerlessness.
The story is about people who seem not to be able to escape their misery (I know... yeah, this is why I enjoyed it, found other people like myself).
And the story is interspersed with biting wit and humour.
Guyana is mentioned "Don't you know, plenty Indians in Guyana! And the word Guyanese is spelt correctly.
The celebration of Christmas is mentioned in the book.. "Christmas is an Indian holiday" and there is writing about the rain and monsoon and the damp and decay.
There are many reviews around on the Internet. What kept me reading, perhaps my own mental state - is the constant cynicism and satire.. in the middle of tragedy there are some comments, cruelly made, which could have any cynical coolie like me giggling probably when I should be offended.
Another reviewer talks about reinforcing prejudices and stereotypes.. and Desai perhaps does that well - the corruption in India "it was normal to expect to pay for a job", the violence of the police and the revolutionaries, the toilet habits - many mentions of the toilet habits, the Desi immigrants, the lack of belonging faced by the Indians who rose in the middle classes in pre-Independence India.
"What an elegant lady," Lola and Noni always said when they saw her, for they liked aristocrats and they liked peasants; it was just what lay between that was distasteful: the middle class bounding over the horizon in an endless phlanax. Thus, they did not wave to Mrs Sen.. "
Other poignant moments... the Judge facing racism from the children in England. The only times I experienced the overt racism was from young children, one set with toy guns, calling me Paki and telling me to go home.. You could cuss up adults, but children is a different thing.
I highly recommend this.. not to those who looking for happy stories. The woman grips you in the story which ends in the same sadness as it starts.
As the man in his New York Times Review said :"Though relieved by much humor, "The Inheritance of Loss" may strike many readers as offering an unrelentingly bitter view. But then, as Orhan Pamuk wrote soon after 9/11, people in the West are "scarcely aware of this overwhelming feeling of humiliation that is experienced by most of the world's population," which "neither magical realistic novels that endow poverty and foolishness with charm nor the exoticism of popular travel literature manages to fathom."
The story is about people who seem not to be able to escape their misery (I know... yeah, this is why I enjoyed it, found other people like myself).
And the story is interspersed with biting wit and humour.
Guyana is mentioned "Don't you know, plenty Indians in Guyana! And the word Guyanese is spelt correctly.
The celebration of Christmas is mentioned in the book.. "Christmas is an Indian holiday" and there is writing about the rain and monsoon and the damp and decay.
There are many reviews around on the Internet. What kept me reading, perhaps my own mental state - is the constant cynicism and satire.. in the middle of tragedy there are some comments, cruelly made, which could have any cynical coolie like me giggling probably when I should be offended.
Another reviewer talks about reinforcing prejudices and stereotypes.. and Desai perhaps does that well - the corruption in India "it was normal to expect to pay for a job", the violence of the police and the revolutionaries, the toilet habits - many mentions of the toilet habits, the Desi immigrants, the lack of belonging faced by the Indians who rose in the middle classes in pre-Independence India.
"What an elegant lady," Lola and Noni always said when they saw her, for they liked aristocrats and they liked peasants; it was just what lay between that was distasteful: the middle class bounding over the horizon in an endless phlanax. Thus, they did not wave to Mrs Sen.. "
Other poignant moments... the Judge facing racism from the children in England. The only times I experienced the overt racism was from young children, one set with toy guns, calling me Paki and telling me to go home.. You could cuss up adults, but children is a different thing.
I highly recommend this.. not to those who looking for happy stories. The woman grips you in the story which ends in the same sadness as it starts.
As the man in his New York Times Review said :"Though relieved by much humor, "The Inheritance of Loss" may strike many readers as offering an unrelentingly bitter view. But then, as Orhan Pamuk wrote soon after 9/11, people in the West are "scarcely aware of this overwhelming feeling of humiliation that is experienced by most of the world's population," which "neither magical realistic novels that endow poverty and foolishness with charm nor the exoticism of popular travel literature manages to fathom."
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