jl1978's Full Review: Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
It's easy to be put off by the 600-plus pages of Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, but this is that rare kind of book that comes along, keeps you awake long into the night and after reaching the final page, leaves you still thinking about the people who inhabited the pages of the story.
This book is so well written that even if you've never been to India, you'll reach the end of this book with a better understanding of what it was like to live there in the mid-1970s. Set in a time when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed "emergency measures" to maintain a stranglehold on her power, you're exposed to a really turbulent period. And with this background of political corruption, violence and stark human suffering, Mistry introduces you to four unlikely people whose lives become tangled together.
Dina Dalal, widowed after only three years of marriage, struggles to maintain her independence from her overbearing and controlling brother. She tries to make ends meet by hiring tailors to help sew piecework and taking on a boarder.
The tailors, Ishvar Darji and his 17-year-old nephew Omprakash, have come to the city in search of a better life. Originally born in a village to a caste of tanners and leather workers, Ishvar's father dared to better the lives of his sons and grandchildren by sending them away to train as tailors. But in daring to do this, he angers the upper castes and puts his own life at risk.
Maneck Kohlah, who's the 17-year-old son of an old school friend of Dina's, takes up residence in one of Dina's rooms to escape from the filthy conditions of the college hostel. Generally a good-natured boy, he harbors a secret anger towards his parents for sending him away and refusing to let him take over and improve the family's general store.
Mistry breaks up the story with forrays into the pasts of each character, revealing each heart-breaking history of hardship and gives the reader a greater sense of who these people are. And that's the key to a great story, isn't it? To get the reader to care so much about these make-believe people that every injustice they suffer makes them rage, fume or even cry over it as if these people were real.
I didn't even mind that the book was so long. I actually wished it would go on even longer --- I didn't want it to end. The only thing I didn't like about the book was the way it ended. It left me shaking my head in disgust and wondering why there was so much injustice in this world.
There's even a passage in the book that hits on this very thought:
He asked himself what it was he had done to deserve a life so stale, so empty of hope. Or was this the way all humans were meant to feel? Did the Master of the Universe take no interest in levelling the scales --- was there no such thing as a fair measure?
I can't say enough good things about this book. Once you get started reading this book, you'll be amazed at how fast you can finish it.
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