A suitable boy is a very large, and very well-written book. It is saturated with complex characters, interesting plots and and wonderful descriptive sections. It is easy to lose a few hours while the characters partying in Calcutta, learning urdu in the countryside or looking for suitable prospects for their unmarried family members.

The first thing I noted, was how human the characters seemed. They are wildly different; conservative or liberal, outgoing or shy, religious, atheist or even hedonistic, but noone is painted as plain good or bad, and at least I started to sympathise with almost all of them. Part of the reason of this is, of course, the sheer size of the novel. During the 1350 pages (in my edition), there is hardly a character with a speaking part whose thoughts the narrator does not let us glimpse.

On a related note, I was amused by the description of the marriages in the book. As a westerner, I almost expect a book with arranged marriages as a central theme to be largely condemning of the practise (most of them, perhaps correctly, are, after all condemning). However, the author lets us see that there are several sides of the issue. One of the happiest marriages in the book, the one of Savita and Pran Kapoor, is arranged, to the degree prior to the wedding, the two had only met for an hour, and even that was chaperoned. On the other hand, one of the few non-arranged marriages are between two of the least sympatic characters in the entire book! (Meenakshi and Arun Mehra). Of course, there are many other marriages, of varying success, so I do not think that the book can be read as a praise for arranged marriages, but these two really stood out to me.

The plot threads are many, most of them highly interesting, but a few of them not so much. I will admit to being bored by the sections detailing the sessions of court and legislation, but as they are a relatively small part of the book, the thrills of the search for a husband for Lata Mehra, the love life of Maan Kapoor (which contained the greatest surprise of the entire book for me), the worries of the courtesan Saeeda Bai or the career twists of Haresh Khanna makes up for it, when viewing the book as a whole.

Also, I must elaborate on the descriptions in the book. I am normally not very interested when an author starts detailing the scenery; I've been known to skip entire pages of the Lord of the Rings when Tolkien gets going. However, this book captivated me. Perhaps it is because the places described are so foreign to me, but I personally lean towards believing that the real cause is Vikram Seth's captivating language.

Despite these words of praise, I do not think it deserves more that 3 1/2 stars. The novel is as noted before, both by me and others, a large one, and I feel that it was too large. I believe that it would have been a lot better if just a few sections had been cut out, pairing it down a few hundred pages. I was, simply stated, bored at times. Yes, there are interesting characters and good language, but when we started to follow the political work of the main characters brother-in-law's urdu teacher, things started to become silly, and I had to force myself to read for about hundred pages (it got better, though)

When considering the overall quality of a book, I have to let size be a factor, I did not find the A suitable boy justified it's blown-up size. This does not mean that I regret reading it, it is still a good book. ( )

This is a great book An Indian version of Pride and Prejudice does not begin to do it justice. ( )

A 1500 page tome, which keeps you gripped throughout the voyage of reading it. That which starts of as the story of a girl in search of her suitable boy spans an entire nation. Set in a background of Post indepedent India, the reader travels through the dusty roads of rural provinces and is visibly pleased by a glittering, shimmering urbane populace. The myriad characters are etched out in the reader's mind so clearly that they seem so living and alive. As the characters go gallivanting through the streets of Calcutta, one is pleasantly rewarded by much mirth, laughter and rhyming couplets
I would urge every serious reader of English fiction to undertake this pleasantly rewarding journey. ( )

It seems to me an amazing feat, as a writer, simply to be able to keep all the threads of a story clear through 1500 pages, but, of course, Vikram Seth does a lot more. The book never lost my interest from the first chapter when I quickly became involved with Lata,(the just slightly younger sister of the woman being married in chapter one, who is being told by her mother that she too will marry a boy of her mother's choice) and her whole web of relationships.

One level of the novel is, of course, the personal stories, and Seth does a good job of presenting people in their complexity. Besides Lata, I was also very caught up in the drama(s) of Maan, the son of a politician who seems a sort of lazy, charming wastral at the beginning, but gains in character as the novel progresses, despite his troubles; of Haresh who is making his way in the world through his own resources and hard work in the shoe business, despite it's association with the lower class; of Bhaskar, the 9 year old math prodigy; and Rasheed who does his best to bring justice to his village and suffers for it, among others.

Another level is the presence of family, and their influence. It might be difficult in the U.S. for someone with a good relationship to their family to go against their wishes to marry whom you like, but nonetheless we see it as an individual decision. And probably, most of us, hold a romantic relationship/marriage relationship as being individual and of more important than any other aside from parent/child. It is not only the influence of family on relationship choices that Seth makes clear, but also, a different attitude towards "passion" in a relationship. Nonetheless, Lata does not feel very different from any other young woman, and so it is easier to enter into her values.

The time period of the novel is just after Indian independence and the partition of Pakistan and India. There are many cultural and political events that we experience from the point of view of characters in the novel, such as the violence of partition (although this is retrospective in the novel) and the resulting tension between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc., the efforts to distribute land from big landowners to the peasants who actually work the land, the divisions that occurred between factions in the Congress party and the election of 1952. It is interesting to get the sort of home grown view of Nehru.

Once I finished the novel, I started reading India after Gandhi and although I haven't gotten very far, already it has been enriching to have the novel in my head as I read about the same historical events and personalities in a history.

This is a very rich book, and, even at the very end, I felt I would have enjoyed reading even more about these characters. ( )

One of my favourite books of all. ( )