Booker Book #41: The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai is a beautifully written novel about people of India: those who are born there, those who live there, those who leave and those who want to leave. One of the central characters, Sai, has been raised in India, but in a Western convent. She goes to live with her grandfather, who returned to India as a judge after being trained in England. The grandfather finds he and Sai have much in common. Another main character, Biju, has left India to pursue the American dream, which turns out to be sleeping on a table in the cheap restaurant where he works and getting no medical treatment for an on-the-job injury. Others are immigrants who are kicked out when the locals try to create an independent state. It seems the population is in a frustrated flux, with people who want to go unable to leave, and those who want to stay being evicted.

I found this novel too sprawling and slow, like Midnight’s Children, which I also didn’t enjoy very much. And yet, despite the long unfurling of the plot, I still did not feel that I got to know the peripheral characters well – I could still barely tell them apart by the end. The “Indian” novels I’ve enjoyed most so far in this project have been by Englishmen: The Siege of Krishnapur and Staying On. I also loved The God of Small Things, which has a tighter, more Western-style plot-with-a-twist, and was a bestseller here in the U.S. So maybe my novel sensibilities are just very Western. I am still glad that this project is pushing me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to read novels I wouldn’t otherwise.