A House for Mr Biswas

Mr. Biswas is one of those characters who you nearly despise....even as you grow more and more attached to him. The character study and exploration conducted here, explicitly and faultlessly, is a journey into one man's existence in Trinidad. His search for dignity centers on the pursuit of his own space and house for he and his family, a goal that (for the reader) seems nearly impossible due to his own missteps and his wife's neverending family. Naipaul's work here is graceful, humorous, and heartbreaking....and, without a doubt, worth reading when you find the time to sprawl into an unfamiliar world and family.

The author has stated publicly that his work is superior to any by women writers. Imagine my disappointment.

It took me over a month to read about the mild misadventures of Mr. Biswas and his efforts to gain a house of his own. (I'm reminded of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.) There were a few pleasurable episodes (especially during Mr. Biswas' early career as a roving, loose-with-the-facts journalist), but because the book is mostly about a querulous child-man, living in a house of equally querulous childish in-laws and their petty squabbles and name-calling, it was a chore. I suppose ultimately Naipaul was saying something about the simple dignity in having a place to call one's own and the indignity of poverty, and perhaps also how show more Colonialism made children out of men, but Mr. Biswas' personality was so off-putting that it's only now that I think of that message. While reading it mostly I thought, "How many more pages?"

Then, as I turned off the light, I thought instead of other writers I love, "Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Margaret Atwood, Edith Wharton, Marjorie Kinan Rawlings, Katherine Anne Porter, Dorothy Parker, Harriet Doerr, Toni Morrison,......." show less

There it is, a modest roofed structure in Sikkim Street standing tall amid the perfumed beds of anthurium lilies. New memories of wet earth after the rain, freshly painted picket fences, the sweet flowers of laburnum tree, mixed aromas flouncing through the warm rooms and wind whiffing through the trees telescoping the painful past. A sense of belonging cherished with merited identity-Mr. Mohun Biswas’s house.

I shy away from the postcolonial contemporary third world fiction. Most of them overwhelm me enlightening the crude aspects of economic claustrophobia which my snobbish approach thoughtlessly overlooks. Keeping in mind this criterion, I cautiously pick out the respected genre books anticipating a satisfying comprehension. Naipaul show more pens a coherent depiction of impoverished dwelling lost between self-identity and rigid ambitions. It is an exasperating yet rewarding life of a simple man who survives the nightmarish surrealism of being born at the devilish midnight hour. Meet Mohun Biswas, the youngest son of a pitiable sugar-cane labourer whose birth was cursed upon by superstitious omen and was destined to be a ruinous disappointment. Mohun’s life churns out be a metaphoric banner for destitution and misfortune. Blamed for his father’s death and the dissolution of the Biswas family, he struggles through every twisted fate of his life trying to find a speck of self-respect, contentment and independence. His marriage in the celebrated Tulsis family is burdensome and intoxicated with him being a mere accessory in his wife’s home. Dutifully carrying on with the mundane obligations, he berates his sympathetic existence. The only shining beacon of hope is a far-fetched dream of buying a house he can call his own. The notion of acquiring an abode becomes an eternal symbol of Mohun’s own existence as a journalist, a father, a husband and moreover a liberated individual.

Naipaul’s vastly elucidated and slow-paced prose underlines quite a few post- colonization inadequacies prevalent in several third world settings till date. Poverty, illiteracy birthing preposterous superstitious dogma, ethnic categorization of class superiority (restricted only to rural infrastructures) and tribulations of pecuniary discrepancies outwitting social hysteria.

Mohun’s tale is heroic in its own humble way. All the man wants in his life is a cozy dwelling without the fear of acerbic prejudices. Some would ridicule on this psychological aspect of obtaining a house. It’s a house, for crying out loud! Why make a big deal of it? For an individual who not only thrives in poverty but is tossed among bizarre quarters of underprivileged hardships; the belief of owning a house becomes deeply satisfying, somewhat a battle in itself. Hear, Hear! To Mohun for making peace with his maddening ordinary living. show less

The life of Mohun Biswas was very difficult to read. His only success in life is that he marries well. Nothing else goes as planned for him. From birth, Biswas was a marked man, a hapless man. The Tulsi family he marries into is influential, but brutal towards Biswas; constantly mocking and ridiculing him. Imposter syndrome follows him wherever he goes. This was billed as a tragicomedy but I found very little to laugh about in Mr. Biswas's struggles. Every time he is on the cusp of success, something stands in his way or knocks him down. His dreams of becoming a serious journalist are dashed when no one cares about his stories unless they are sensationalized. His dreams of becoming a respected family man are wasted when even his show more children turn against him. The one dream he has left, to own his own house, becomes his entire life. show less

'Bigger than all of them was the house, his house',, May 31, 2014
By
sally tarbox (aylesbury bucks uk) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A House For Mr Biswas (Kindle Edition)
Wonderful read, highly entertaining with laugh-out-loud moments yet touchingly sad as well.
The novel opens shortly before the death of Mr Biswas, with his fear of losing his home. In the narrative that follows, charting Mr Biswas' life, forever vulnerable to the whims of others, and with no place to call his own, we come to see why the house has such significance for him.
For much of his life lack of money compels him to share a large communal house with his wife's family, overseen by the stern and unpredictable matriarch Mrs Tulsi. In his descriptions of the show more 'shifting, tangled, multifarious relationships' of the Tulsis come many of the novel's most vividly comic moments:

'To combat W C Tuttle's gramophone Chinta and Govind had been giving a series of pious singings from the Ramayana....she sang very well. Govind sang less mellifluously: he partly whined and partly grunted, from his habit of singing while lying on his belly, Caught in this crossfire of song, which sometimes lasted a whole evening, Mr Biswas, listening, listening, would on a sudden rush in pants and vest to the inner room and bang on the partition of Govind's room and bang on the partition of W C Tuttle's drawingroom.
The Tuttles never replied. Chinta sang with added zest. Govind sometimes only chuckled between couplets, making it appear to be part of his song.'

or

"One of the sons-in-law was invariably responsible for precipitating Mrs Tulsi's faint. He was now hounded by silence and hostility. If he attempted to make friendly talk many glances instantly reproved him for his frivolity. If he moped in a corner or went up to his room he was condemned for his callousness and ingratitude. He was expected to stay in the hall and show all the signs of contrition and unease.. He waited for the sounds of footsteps coming from the Rose Room; he accosted a busy, offended sister and, ignoring snubs, made whispered enquiries about Mrs Tulsi's condition. Next morning he came down, shy and sheepish. Mrs Tulsi would be better. She would ignore him. But that evening forgiveness would be in the air. The offender would be spoken to as if nothing had happened, and he would respond with eagerness.'

Brilliant observations on human behaviour, an absolute must-read. show less

Mr. Biswas is a stupid, thoughtless, feckless, odious man. His wife and her entire family and all their retainers are likewise stupid and odious, and we can add to the list — conniving.

Nothing of real consequence occurs in this novel. Nobody of consequence graces its pages. No person, with the possible exception of Mr. Burnett, the Sentinel editor who gives Mr. Biswas a job, is portrayed by the author as decent in his or her dealings with family or friends. The author has such contempt for his characters that he only reluctantly names them when he absolutely has to. The most contemptible characters get no name at all or a made-up mock name.

All of this takes place in a milieu of crushing poverty — material and spiritual. And we are show more treated to mind-numbing detail which seems to merely pile on the inconsequential sequence of events and stupefying contemptibility of the entire parade of people who populate this over-long novel. Nothing is served. Nobody learns a thing. The intergenerational poverty is not abated nor is the appalling ignorance.

So I ask, simply: WHY SHOULD ANYBODY SLOG THROUGH 566 PAGES OF SUCH INCONSEQUENTIAL DRIVEL ABOUT SO MANY CLUELESS PEOPLE WHO CANNOT GET OUT OF THEIR OWN WAY?

I have no answer. I am sorry I wasted my time. show less

Like many of the other reviewers here, I found this book very difficult to get into. Abandoned it once after 30 pages, but made a determined second attempt. Ultimately an intense reading experience, if not a great novel. I am astounded by those who speak of the book's "humour." What else amuses them? An elderly vet falling and breaking his hip on the steps of the cenotaph as he tries to lay a wreath? I found this book dark and painful in the extreme, a record of defeat unmitigated by the smallest pleasure; every meal is badly cooked, every physical object is jerry-built and damaged, every outing or promised treat ends in disappointment. (There is one exception, late in the story. "Laden hampers" are featured, an obsessive theme.) Family show more relationships are universally coercive and/or abusive. Stylistically, as others have noted, it is repetitive and without narrative shape. One feels that details and events have been included for extra-literary reasons. Naipaul says in his introduction to the 20th anniversary edition "Of all my books this is the one closest to me. It is the most personal, created out of what I saw and felt as a child." If this is remotely true it reveals a psychic wound of unimaginable depth and probably explains why Naipaul is widely regarded as a very nasty man, personally speaking. show less