This postcolonial read really drags you into the conflict between what one's nationality and sense of culture was before the colonizer, and after. Who are you when you enter another country, especially if you hold no status in that country. Nothing I say here could really do it justice, so I have to say that in terms of a cultural discussion on what happens to one's identity after being colonized, this is one of the best. (See my blog--One Literature Nut--for a full review.) ( )

Disturbingly realistic, a dire commentary on colonialism, immigration and the search for a better life. ( )

Kira Desai has written a novel in which immigration, national identity, colonialism and the cast system in India are thoughtfully explored. The lives of several characters, belonging to different casts, generations and with different backgrounds, but all linked to the town of kallimpong and somehow related among themselves, are unfolded in this story. A retired judge (who was educated in Britain but who belonged to a poor family) and his neglected grandaughter; their cook and his son (who has emigrated to the USA); a local young male who tutors the granddaughter (who also comes from a poor background); their neighbors and acquaintances; some European immigrants; they all bring different perspectives on the life on the small community and their relations with the wider world. Although there is some humour in the novel, most of the narration focuses on the negative effects of the cast system, the class system, colonialism, nationalism and immigration on the characters. It is a very pessimistic novel. With the exception of the cook, most of the characters are unsympathetically characterized and they are not very engaging. Although the topics explored are interesting, the plot does not hold well together and the characters feel like tokens to illustrate particular positions within the debate. Nevertheless, the writing is beautiful. ( )

Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss has been one of the most beautifully written multi-layer novels I have read in recent years. On one hand its story line work great on their own, but woven together they create an even more amazing tapestry. They work on the individual level (e.g. how an elderly judge reminisces about his path that led him to hating almost everything and everybody), on the relationship level (e.g. how a young girl and her math tutor fall for each other and what this relationship has to stand against), on the communal level (e.g. how the Ghorka rebellion changes the life of a small town and its inhabitants), on the national level (e.g. how India struggled to become independent and stay one country despite the factors and factions that tried to pull it apart.)

What touched me the most were the challenges of immigrant life. I was fortunate enough never to have to struggle as an illegal immigrant, but the cruelties, emotions and difficulties that those who come to the US are facing were rather well depicted here. The forces that keep them here and draw them back home are shown in depth, while the realities of hard life at both places seem insurmountable.

Desai is the master of creating individual sentences that stuck in your head for a long time and makes you want to analyze them at length. She is also the master of short vignettes; indeed the whole book is constructed as a post-modernist series of them. But I have to admit after finishing the whole of the book I realized that she is like a painter who applies a patch of paint here, a line there, and a brush stroke over there and only by the end of you see the whole picture as one coherent work. That takes real mastery of modern wordsmithing.

The writing in this novel is luscious, but it doesn't get in the way of moving the story forward. I don't know how Desai does it--I'm tempted to re-read the novel just to figure that out. I've read that there is some controversy among residents of Kalimpong, the town where the novel takes place, and an accusation of Anti-Nepalese sentiment. I didn't find that to be the case. Desai is equally ironic and castigating toward everyone in the novel and every social class.

Each sentence is gorgeous, the use of language innovative, and so just right in the way she describes a state of mind or a rat in a New York restaurant or the lushness of India. But I didn't get lost or impatient with the language as in some books where the beauty of words exists only for itself. Maybe it was just so good that I looked forward to the next sentence and the next. If an author does anything spectacularly it rises above the very good and can work where it wouldn't be enough in and of itself in lessor hands.

The only weakness I found was in the description of the Ghorka rebellion. Irony and hyperbole worked less well for me here and so the book slowed down right at the point where the nature of the story would be expected to be most gripping. But it picked up again as soon as she was done with that and back to her strong suit: third world people striving to be first world, love and exploitation, life in its immensity whether rural or urban.

This is not an optimistic book and none of the characters is especially likable. That would usually have stopped me early on. But ironic distance made it tolerable for me, and there is so much humour as well as intense attention to the vivid life of things that the beauty lifted me over the pessimism. The only character who grows through his experience, is introspective about it, and changes is subject to the greatest humiliation (though thankfully not the greatest violence). I don't want to give away the end, though it stands so vivid in my mind I want to write about it. Let it be said then that when I think about it, having finished the book a week or two ago, that there is a gentle humour about the final scene, an acknowledgment that all has been lost but the most important thing, love and for love's sake, reunion.