An powerful and engaging read, 'The Inheritance of Loss' shows a household stretched and torn by the world; poverty, work, the cast system, politics, immigration, family, marriage and relationships are all joined in the web that traps the characters. Yet it is such a well written and believable novel that all of this is nothing more than everyday life. This is a great post-colonial story, and well worth reading. ( )

I really didn't enjoy this book - but I can't rate it too low; it is very well written. The novel is well-paced, the characters are engaging, human (sometimes they do what you hope and many times not). It explores some huge issues - cyclical violence and colonialism in India, the impact and sources of emigration - through the eyes of the human beings involved, and does so in a compelling way.

I think that the reason I was so disappointed in it is that, often, on a human scale, there is both happiness and sadness, gain and loss - and plenty of surprises. Desai's novel (perhaps I should have been forewarned by the title?) sees only one half of the equation. Any good that is noticed in the book is destroyed or taken away by the end - relationships are all damaged or destroyed, security and safety are gone, savings stolen, wordly goods, pets, lovers - all these are torn apart and stomped to bits by the last page. Living during the Gurkha uprising would have been damaging on a huge scale - no denying this. Fear would be rampant, security nonexistent, and the worst of human behavior would come forth. And yet - life is rarely unmitigated bad acts and loss. Even in the worst of times, for some people, some good things happen. I'm no Pollyanna - and I've read other books about these topics (Gosh, Mukherjee, Mistry - even Naipaul, though he's not really part of this crowd) that show plenty of loss, strain and damage. But in these, there is also some good in life. I put this book down and could feel nothing other than depressed.

Still, it's very well wrought and easy to read. I'd be hard pressed to say, "don't read it." Just - read it when you have the wherewithal to deal with unmitigated cynicism. ( )

Beautiful, lush prose. Very atmospheric. This novel is a joy to read. ( )

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.

Desai can write well on a line-by-line basis, and is capable of some beautiful, fresh imagery, but The Inheritance of Loss just didn't hang together as a novel for me. I found her treatment of colonialism and nationalism, emigration and belonging, to be extremely interesting, especially as they're explored from an Indian perspective—one which you don't get to see much of in the west. There's an awful lot in those themes for Desai to pursue—but she hints at a tension she never follows through on, as the novel gets bogged down by its glacial pacing and by its weak character development. The Inheritance of Loss ultimately fails to cohere, and while it has its moments, ultimately it wasn't for me. ( )

Group portrait of the futility of both defiance and resignation by weak characters in a powerful turmoil. Modestly pensioned outsiders -- Gujaratis and other Indians and an elderly Swiss priest -- have been enjoying the privileges affordable only because of their neighbors' poverty in Nepali country around Darjeeling, and are baffled and overwhelmed by the wild boys in the violent 1986 rising of the Ghorka National Liberation Front. Retired judge Jamu Patel, furious against himself and thus the world because of his own timidity, is especially odious, fascinating and dismayingly believable, a weak man so deeply colonized psychologically that he hates his own dark skin-color and anything that reminds him of his Indianness, having scorned his parents and abused his wife and now his long-time cook, and not daring to show any generosity toward his orphaned teen-age granddaughter Sai. The most carefully portrayed characters include the judge's long-suffering (and unnamed) cook, whose greatest devotion is to his son Biju, and Biju himself struggling -- futilely -- to gather savings as an illegal immigrant kitchen worker in cheap New York restaurants; Gyan, Sai's young Nepalese tutor and suitor, who betrays her under pressure from his young Nepalese buddies and then tries to persuade himself that his cowardly actions were really heroic, Uncle Potty the well-read alcoholic and his Swiss priest chum, and a couple of sweet, ineffectual Indian ladies who would much rather be British. In the end, all these characters lose property and/or pride, and only the loving relationship of the cook and his son give a glimpse of better possibilities. Winner, Man Booker Prize, 2006. ( )

Seemingly poking at every sore spot in the Indian diaspora, Kiran Desai follows about a year in the lives of residents of Kalimpong, India, which is near the Nepal border and in view of the great mountain, Kanchenjunga. The Inheritance of Loss deals with the universal themes of the importance of family and the dangers of materialism, but its most important aspect to me is the description it provides of the development of modern India through flashbacks in the lives of the main characters, particularly focusing on the consequences of immigration to Britain and the U.S., as well as the Nepalese separatist movement of the 1980s. Ms. Desai's writing is confident and well-researched, and the dialogue is clever and interesting. I listened to the CD audiobook version, which is narrated by Meera Simhan, who does an astounding job with the many accents of the characters. ( )

Absolutely brilliant. For all those who have been in India and have also been treated as unwelcomed immigrants in the US (even being just students or tourists), it's extremely recommended. It's real as life. ( )

I remember this one being reviewed as a book that genuinely deserved its Booker prize - you know, rather than the hyped-up tripe that can so often get it. Sadly, no. The dreamy and descriptive style, very arch and whimsical, never alters or gathers pace over the 300+ pages, and what was, at the start, absorbing, is ultimately dreary. It's as if Desai is holding at arm's length the genuine issues with which the book is concerned (the paralyzing effects of colonialism, the new griefs of globalization). But it has a distancing effect and, in the end, the only character that I truly cared about was the old man's dog. It's possible that this was the writer manipulating me (the same way that you're forced to hold your hands up and admit you care more about the poor wee kitten than the nasty junkie in Trainspotting), but I don't think there was enough writerly craft going on, so I'm simply forced to admit that I'm a bad person. ( )

I just finished The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and it was well worth the read. The book takes place in India at the foot of the Himalayas in the mid 1980's, and it exposes the startling contrast between the daily lives of a post colonial people and the expectations that in the USA or England a better life awaits. Kiran Desai paints a picture that is both painful to read, yet worth the comprehension. This Booker Prize winning novel awesome! ( )

The daughter of writer Anita, Kiran Desai paints a colorful, painful, humorous story of immigrants and natives trying to live their lives purely, honestly within their own conflicts - external and internal. ( )

The 2006 Booker Prize winner set in the foothills of the Himalayas and part of the time in New York. We follow Sai the orphaned gradaughter of the judge she lives with. He treated his wife terribly and disowned his daughter, but his one love is dog Mutt who he completely spoils. Living with them also is Cook whose son Biju has been sent to New York to find a better life.

Sai has fallen in love with her maths tutor Gyan and he feels the same until their world is shaken up by the Nepalese community uprising. Gyan is Nepalese and is torn between his love and his loyalties. In New York Biju is struggling to make his own way as an illegal immigrant. Back home all anyone wants to do is get to the West where everything is better, they can make more money and get ahead in life. Sadly things are very different from the perception and Biju has some terrible experiences living in a cramped basement and changing jobs often to avoid being caught out.

To be honest I don't have too much to say about this. I enjoyed the style of writing, but I wasn't really taken with the story. I wasn't too involved with the characters except the charming Mutt and I spent most of the book hoping nothing bad would happen to her. Desai was the youngest woman to win the Booker Prize, but I am not sure I would make the effort to read more of her novels in the future. ( )

This book is set in the Himalayas in a dilapidated magazine, which is hope to three different people. Scattered around them is a community which is facing an upheaval as political unrest spreads through the locale. The house is owned by the judge, English-educated and retired from the judiciary. His orphaned granddaughter shares his home and is dealing with her first infatuation. The last member of the household is the cook, whose ambitions are tied up in the fortunes of his son, who is working a menial job in America.

I found the first part of the book to be quite slow. In fact it's nealrly glacial enough in it's pace to make you give up. However, perserverance is rewarded, to some degree at least. Desai raises interesting questions around the notion of national identity. Anglophile Indians who live comfortable isolated lives suddenly face nationalistic pride.

I did like this book, but I do wonder as to it's Booker Prize credentials. It is a good story, once you stick with it. It deals with a changing India, as well as relating some poignant individual stories. I would like to belive that it accurately portrays a life in India. A sense of decay and loss permeates the whole book. However, I just don't think that it's a great book. ( )

i found this book a bit dull and boring at times, but i did manage to make it through the end. i think the second half was better than the first. the title really explains the essence of the book, a cast of characters inherit the losses of the generations before them....really a sad story about all these people struggling to make it in india. i can see why it won the booker prize, although i wish it had been just a little more interesting. ( )

So boring!! I ALWAYS finish a book once I've started it, no matter how much I'm not into it, because more times than not, there's something that makes it worth it; whether it be the unexpected "twist" or the shocking ending. Unfortunately, The Inheritance of Loss has been the only book in my "reading repertoire" that I didn't finish reading. ( )

This book came to me with a number of very varied reviews, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Set in the misty north-eastern Himalayas, with a romantically crumbling old worlde feel, the growing Neaplese insurgency comes to disturb and overturn the lives of Judge JP Patel, his granddaughter Sai Mistry and their small circle of friends.

Initially tangibly beautiful - "The caress of the mist through her hair seemed human, and when she held her fingers out, the vapour took them gently into its mouth" - feelgood novel this isn't, but an intriguing and, at times, captivating read all the same. I think what I liked best were the characterisations - each character rang true to me, from Sai with her naive, tenative first-love irrationalities; to Biju, with the claustrophobic pressure of family and nation able to leap across continents and grab him by the throat even as he lies, trying to snatch some sleep lying on the tables of the restaurants in which he works; to the Judge, with his cantankerous old and scabbery memories. I was a little less convinced by Gyan's sudden transitions, in love as well as in war, and some of the writing - cumulation appearing to be a favourite technique - but Desai's evocation of the voices, the liminal dangers and the mundane realities of life under political instability was a suitably poignant compensation. ( )

Not a bad read, although is was overall more sad than anything. Desai's writing style was engaging and kept me interested. The novel is mainly set in Kolimpang, India near Darjeeling which was new to me so it inspired me to do a bit of online info browsing. I am glad I did because it gave me a sense of how truly beautiful the area appears. The rest of the book is set in rural England or New York City. One of the major themes addressed is the complexities of immigration and identity in one's adopted land. There are interesting comparisons made between Bengalese immigrants in New York and Nepalese immigrants in Bengal. Desai throws in some quick but scathing scenes regarding tourists in Darjeeling which made me more introspective than any other part in the book. As far as "loss" and its inheritance goes, there is quite a bit. At first I thought the dog bit was a little cheap, because I am sucker for dogs, but she tied it in appropriately with the rest of the themes of the book.

Lastly, and I personally don't feel that this has anything to do with the merits of Desai's writing, but I found it somewhat strange that some current residents of Kalimpong resent the way that Desai represented the Nepalese population in the book. I didn't really get a sense that there were any negative aspects laid on Nepalese people as a whole anywhere in the story. If anything I thought the grandfather was the most despicable character and in a sense he represented mainly opposite themes than the Nepalese. Perhaps someday I will visit myself and gain some insight, and I will try not to do some of the degrading things the tourists do in Desai's novel. ( )

Very negative book on India and immigration: A very depressing book with a completely unsatisfying ending. The stream of conscience writing was also not effective and mostly just confusing. There are many books about India and most of them have some kind of sad aspect, but this just makes it look awful, and it makes the US look awful on top of that. Very little consideration for the beautiful things in life and the harmony that comes of chaos in India. Only two characters were any good and the other ones we just wanted to get lost. The family dog was the best person in the whole book.

Read "What a Body Remembers" by Shauna Singh Baldwin if you want a story about India that is both sad and beautiful.

There are some beautiful descriptive passages in this book, but the political posturing lets it down as a novel. It reminds us that the British did nasty things to India and Indians, that rich Indians do nasty things to poor Indians, that the American system does nasty things to illicit immigrants from India, that India does nasty things to a Swiss priest turned farmer who has lived there for 50 years but neglected to get the correct papers. The characters are inadequately developed and the plot is an after-thought. How did it win the Booker prize? ( )

Beautiful book- desai is very skillful at knowing how and when to switch scenes, from kalimpong to new york, from present to past. i did feel, though, that everything could have been done more. just me? ( )

Quite possibly the most boring book I've ever had the misfortune to read. ( )