With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future. As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Emotionally draining.:
This book actually beat out The Jungle by Upton Sinclair as the most depressing book I've ever read. Although both stories contain equal amounts of death, disfigurements and hopelessness, this one does a better job of painting the characters as real people, and allows the reader to better identify with the various people in the book -- which in turn makes all the crap they suffer through seem even worse. It's a story that covers various generations of people living in India up through the late 70's. It... more info
Unbalanced - But Brilliantly So:
I'll admit that I'm not typically drawn to books that make "Oprah's Book Club", so it was with some trepidation that I picked up Rohinton Mistry's "A Fine Balance". But I was pleasantly surprised to find this a remarkable achievement - an ambitious, bold, and unapologetic look under the covers of India in the mid-1970's. It is the epic tale of four lives - a feisty widow too proud to accept help from her wealthy brother, tan uncle/nephew tailor team who escape the brutal caste system come to the "city by... more info
Where is the balance?:
I was throughly disappointed with this book and found that half through it the author abandoned the fundamental concept he himself introduced - the fine balance between hope and despair. Towards the end, the narration slips into the darkness, tragedy and ugliness of such concentration, that the brain refuses to accept it as realistically possible.
A Fine Balance:
This was a great story. I took it as my main book on a two week vacation. I thought it would take me about that long to read it, because it is a large book. I got so involved with the characters, that I couldn't tear myself away. There are no incidental characters. I love the way the author weaves each person into the story so that when you meet them later they have evolved into an indispensable part. There was so much going on, that when I was asked what it was about, I had a hard time trying to retell it.... more info
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