Oprah's club pick

From Back cover:
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

RELEASE NOTES:

JDT accepted this book that was offerred on the "Begins with A" relay as a surprise RABCK for MmeClinton. What fun! I love surprises and am looking forward to passing this book along.

What a delightful surprise to receive this book in the mail... sent by Narfinmagic.... but because my good bookcrossing angle JDT asked her to send it along to me!!! A true RABCK from two people at once! You are both awesome! And furthermore, this looks wonderful; after recently reading A Suitable Boy, about India, I am thirsting for more.... thank you so much!

I have vowed to hunt the RABCK books out of my enormous TBR pile and honor those who sent them along to me by actually reading them and getting them out again! It took me almost six years to get to this; how did that happen? Anyway, I am left with some very mixed feelings about this wonderfully written saga. I've let it sit for 24 hours before making an entry. It is a long read (although shorter than two other sagas about India, both of which I liked more than this one: A Suitable Boy and Shantaram, both highly recommended). Not that I didn't like this, but it left me quite melancholy. Overall it is a dispiriting book. You learn to love the main characters and to root for their eventual happiness, ***spoiler alert*** in the end, most lose out. The horrors that happen, at least for me, do not balance out the happy events. I suspect I feel very much like Maneck in the end, Maneck the sweet boy for whom life seems to smile throughout and who personally doesn't suffer anything more than you or I will, such as the loss from normal circumstances (to contrast with dreadful events that just shouldn't exist in any world where a real god exists) of people one loves, the distancing of affection when life separates you for long periods, etc. Bu the piling up in his heart of losses caused by the cruelty of others condemns him, emotionally. And Dina, well, she survives, as do the two wonderful tailors, but at what price, and is it worth it? Mistry does a marvelous job making us like those whom we might at first encounter shy away from, just as Dina does. But over and over he writes that we all want hope to balance despair... and in this saga, it just doesn't. So don't read this when you are feeling down, as it is a bummer trip. And don't feel every saga about India will leave you with this feeling of dejection!

I will include this in a box I am sending to Neuilly, my daughter, who requested this book!

A tad late on my JE, sorry!! I received this book from my mother. I really love reading about India, even the not quite happy stories. This is going on my TBR pile...but hopefully not for six years!! (Had to tease my mom on that one!)