A Fine Balance (1995)

I did enjoy the book but I wasn't sure I would. It took me a lot of time and reading to really get hooked and wasn't sure I would enjoy it but read anyway. It finally captivated me enough to really care what happened to the characters. What a heart wrenching story. It is so hard to believe that people can be so cruel to each other but they are all the time. Thanx for sharing this book with me. I am glad I read it. I did have a hard time going to sleep after finishing it last night. The ending had me thinking. ( )

Discovering this 1995 novel all these years later, it drew strong comparisons for me with "The Kite Runner" in its style and subject matter, and how it dispenses with all the needless magical realism of "Midnight's Children". This one is arguably braver than either of those novels for being utterly unflinching. The four central characters represent a swath of India's population on the social economic scale in the 1970s, and the course of their lives explores every corner of the worst things that period had to offer. Mistry never identifies Bombay/Mumbai by name, and 'the Prime Minister' never has her name stated. I thought this was strange distancing in a novel that refuses to shy away from harsh realities, but perhaps the lesson is that India's past should not be dismissed as having no bearing on its present.

At over 700 pages this novel might have been shorter, but it never feels long with its brisk pacing, its dramatic highs and lows. As other reviewers have noted, it is the man whom Maneck meets on the train who delivers the key line, "You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair." But another telling quote is, "They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things." The epilogue is earned and it is pitch perfect. ( )

Four people are thrown together by happenstance, become friends, and form a kind of family in a city in India where the prevailing atmosphere is poverty, corruption, injustice, and despair. ( )

The fine balance is between hope and despair, between justice and injustice, between humanity and cruelty. But I really felt the stars tended to cruelty, injustice and lack of humanity. Realizing the setting is Indira Ghandi’s India doesn’t change it, but just makes the examples crueler and harsher and very difficult to take. Quite a portrait. Bring a strong stomach. ( )

Usually when I finish a book - and if that book touched me in some way - I find myself reading reviews hoping that someone already said (and in a better way that I would) what I want to say. And if I don't find it I feel the need to post a short review myself even though I'm horrible at it (and so is my English).

I skipped through several reviews here and I cannot immediately find the main though that's been in my head since I closed this book. So...

The name of the book, the meaning of the name, suddenly seemed totally and absolutely clear when I read the last scene.
You have to find this find balance between hope and despair in your life to keep going, and Dina, Om and Ishvar managed to do it. Despite lost husbands, lost families, lost homes, lost legs, lost testicles and basically lost everything.
What striked me most was Dina's thinking about how those two made her laugh every day, and how she still got a bit of time before making dinner so why not take a nap.

And this is amazing. This is just so.. normal. Something from normal, day-by-day life. And the idea that after all that they went through they managed to grab a hold of this - almost - normal life blows my mind.
I wouldn't be able to do it.
I would be Maneck. ( )