A Fine Balance

A truly sickening portrayal of daily life that I simply couldn't put down. I've been trying to digest this masterpiece that I somehow read on vacation (!!!!) for a few months now, and I still don't think I can form the words to truly do it justice. Definitely one of the best I've ever read, and one that justifies being over 600 pages long. Also, take a good look at the cover (the one with the stripes) and really think about it for a moment. It will come back to haunt you when you least expect it.

[A Fine Balance] is a sweeping drama of four people who unexpectedly end up living together during a tumultuous year, 1975, in India. Dina is a middle-aged widow desperately trying to hang on to her independence, despite her brother's efforts to get her to re-marry. Maneck is a young man in the city to attend college, who left his beautiful mountain town at his parents' behest to try to better his life. The student hostel is so disgusting that he ends up renting a room from Dina, who is a distant family friend. And then there are Ishvar and Omprakash, who are tailors that end up working for Dina out of her apartment. They were also living in a rural town where their family had been on the rise out of their lower caste. But misfortunes show more keep arising to keep them down. The four will spend a year together during a State of Emergency declared by the Prime Minister that upends life for the lower classes in some truly horrifying and gruesome ways.

The book is grim and has moments of utter despair, pure bad luck, and unfairness. There are despicable characters, horrible deaths, and plenty of squalor. Usually I can't stomach a book like this. However, Mistry somehow balances this with some good, some lighthearted moments, and impressive writing. I was completely invested from the first chapter and just had to see where it was all going to end up. I don't think, in a book like this, it's a spoiler to say that things do not end well for all the characters. It's clear from the get go that a book this realistic will not have a fairy tale ending - though I did keep hoping for one. And I suppose that's where the title comes in. Life is "a fine balance" of hope and despair. In 1970s India, if Mistry's portrayal is at all accurate, this is all too true. show less

This was a reread. I first read it at about the time of its publication in 1995, and have always remembered it as one of my favorite books ever. I wanted to see if it still held up after all these years.

iI won't keep you in suspense: I still love this book, although on this reread I noticed more than a few blatant coincidences that should have bothered me, but didn't. It is an epic tale of India during the 1970's. It is set primarily in Mumbai during the so-called "Emergency" when Indira Ghandi's government imposed a series of harsh and repressive measures, and there was much unrest and violence. Along the way we experience many of the horrifying events in India: the Partition, the violence against Muslims, the violence against the show more untouchables, beggars, the massive slums, forced sterilization, con men, thugs, official corruption, and much, much more.

Two tailors, Ishvar and Om, uncle and nephew, of the untouchable caste, have come to Mumbai from their small village to make their fortune. Although Ishvar and his brother Narayan trained as tailors in order to escape their caste, they were still violently abused in their small village, which led to the death of Narayan. Ishvar brings Narayan's son Om to the city to overcome that past.

In the city, they obtain work producing garments with Dina, a widow desperately trying to maintain her independence. They also develop a friendship with Dina's young boarder, a student. Through these four marvelous characters we come to view the panorama of Indian life. Of vastly different backgrounds, and initially suspicious of each other, over time, the four form a family of sorts.

One of the things I remembered from my first read of this book was how Dickensian it was. One horror after another overtakes these characters, but they, especially Ishvar and Om, just keep coming up for air, and keep on keeping on. Despite the seemingly constant tragedies, there is much rejoicing in the book, and the book at several points references life as "a fine balance" between despair and hope. I will say, however, the has one of the most devastating endings I have ever read, though even then there is hope in what the characters make of it.

The book begins with the epitaph: "This story is not fiction. All is true."

I guess I would still put this book in the category of books I think everyone should read.

5 stars show less

How can a book with so much misery and social abuse be so engaging? Through wonderful characters and excellent writing style we see India during the Emergency created buy India Gandhi and the horrors that were created in the name of social improvement. Four lives come to live together in one small, cramped apartment, all seeking respite and connection in a world turned upside down. A moving tale that is one you are not likely to forget.

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 show more 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. show less

In India in 1975, four individuals' lives intersect and intertwine in ways that none of them expected. Dina Dalal is a widow just barely keeping poverty away by taking on a paying guest and starting a small sewing business. Maneck is a student desperate to escape the awful living conditions in the student housing, who ends up staying with Dina, a school friend of his mother. Ishvar and Omprakash are an uncle and nephew who have come from their small village to earn their fortune in the city working as tailors. As these four people begin to form relationships they also begin to recognize the harsh realities that each of them face and the possibilities for hope in their lives.

This is one of those novels that will linger long after you show more read the final page. Mistry creates four central characters who feel unbelievably real and places them in a world that is often devastating in its realities. The novel is also one that causes the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and behaviours. How much sympathy do we really give those who are less fortunate than us? Are we ever capable of looking beyond our own problems and issues to recognize those of the others in close proximity to us? Yet in the midst of raising these questions, the writing never feels like anything more than beautiful, if occasionally painful, storytelling. Mistry's novel is an immersive experience that alters you after it ends. show less

It’s always a tricky question: how long should you carry on reading a book when you’re really not enjoying it? I generally give it 100-200 pages to provide me with some reason to keep reading. I rarely give up on books and doing so always makes me feel guilty, like I haven’t them a fair chance. Now I’m giving up on ‘A Fine Balance’, a superbly written novel, after getting only 142 pages in over more than a month. I’ll tell you why: it was upsetting me too much. Not that I am a terribly delicate flower with fiction - I made it through [b:Germinal|28407|Germinal (Les Rougon-Macquart, #13)|Émile Zola|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388208755s/28407.jpg|941651]. ‘A Fine Balance’ read to me as a catalogue of show more beautifully expressed human suffering. What really got to me about this suffering, I think, was the combination of mundanity, which lent absolute conviction, and pervasiveness.

Regarding the former, I’ve always been more easily moved by the small, everyday tragedies than the epic, capital-R romantic stuff. For example, I am rarely inspired to tears by heroic sacrifice in films, whereas I once absolutely cried my eyes out at a medical documentary about an elderly man dying peacefully in his sleep. Sweeping tragedy can take on a magnificence (just ask Victor Hugo) and even when that is lacking invites abstraction into symbols. Small everyday sadnesses have none of that, which makes me feel them all the more intensely. In ‘A Fine Balance’ there is no great meaning to the characters’ sufferings, they just happen. The devastation of this is compounded by the latter element, pervasiveness. Mistry introduces a character and gives you their background: the losses, disappointments, and sadness they have suffered. You sympathise with them. Then he shifts perspective to a someone who was unsympathetic in the previous character’s story - an oppressive rent-collector or mean boss - and does the same for them. This conveys to the reader that everyone’s life is full of suffering and that, even as they try to do their best, everyone cannot help but make others unhappy. Mistry shows this with great skill.

Thus I found myself putting off reading ‘A Fine Balance’. When I would normally pick up my current novel, I started another book, or read the internet, or binge-watched netflix, or stared out of the train window daydreaming, or even sorted through months of receipts. Once I realised I was doing so, I asked myself: who are you reading this book for? I read because I love reading, for joy, for escape, and for learning. No-one is forcing me to read. So I’m putting aside ‘A Fine Balance’ because it was making me sad and therefore I didn’t want to read it. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again sometime, as it is undoubtedly well-written, evocative, and powerful. I was expecting it to deal directly with the political upheavals of 1970s India, which I expect it does further on, rather than the grinding daily tragedy of individual lives. Of course, that’s how you convey the reality of politics. If I wanted that sort of sadness in my life, though, I’d read (more of) the news. show less