Athena K's review - The Inheritance of Loss

Through this novel, Kiran Desai transported me to a part of the world I had never spent any time thinking about - Northeastern India in the foothills of the Himalayas.  Her words evoked a fantastic sense of place and landscape that I really enjoyed.  And through the narrative structure of storytelling and memories she creates compelling and deeply flawed but fascinating characters.  This was a great novel.

The opening and closing sequences, describing the view from the central house overlooking the Himalayan Mountains, acted as a beautiful metaphor for many of the book's themes: 

"All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.  Briefly visible above the vapor, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out if ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at the summit."

For a person living in Seattle, the image of an almost corporeal mist hiding and revealing a stunning mountain resonates immediately.  And on those days when the Mountain (in my case, Mount Rainier) is exposed and lit by the evening light, there is nothing more beautiful, humbling, and inspiring.

 In this novel, Mount Kanchenjunga's appearance is a symbol for the discovery of deep and permanent truths, including love, family, and community.  We follow four main characters: Sai, an orphaned teenage girl on the verge of womanhood and independence; her grandfather the Judge, who has for most of his life rejected his Indianness in favor of Englishness; their cook, man who feels deep loyalty to the Judge and Sai, but is constrained by class and poverty, and his son Biju, an illegal immigrant in New York City striving to obtain his piece of the American dream. The novel is set against the backdrop of a sometimes violent uprising by Nepali-Indians demanding a separate and independent state.  Sai falls in love with a young man who chooses the movement over their love, and betrays her - a decision that torments him as he struggles with his conflicting feelings.

But for me the most interesting characters were those who attempted to reject their Indianness.  In their own ways both the Judge and Biju attempt to slough off their Indian culture and heritage in favor of Western ideals and dreams.  For the Judge, who studies in England and is appointed by the British before Independence, the India he sees is dirty, ignorant, classless.  He ultimately rejects Indianness to the greatest extent possible - from food and customs to his own wife and daughter.  Biju on the other hand rejects his Indianness only through perceived need.  He chases a dream of wealth and easy life that eludes him in New York.  Their decisions leave both the Judge and Biju miserable and cut off from family and community.  Only in the end, when all that both have worked for and accumulated has been lost, stolen, or decayed, does Mount Kanchenjunga reveal itself at the reunion of Biju and his father:

"The five peaks of Kanchenjunga turned golden with the kind of luminous light that made you feel, if briefly, that truth was apparent.  All you needed to do was to reach out and pluck it."

2006, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

I've had this one on my TBR for a while, and having seen Slumdog Millionaire, I thought it was time to read it!

http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/the-inheritance-of-loss-by-kiran-desai-beware-spoilers/

I finished reading this book and journalled it on 12.3.09.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Jill)

The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai
Completed July 27, 2008

It’s hard to review The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Overall, it was a good story – not spectacular but not horrible. It certainly appealed to the critics, but for an average reader like me, I was slightly disappointed with parts of this award-winning novel.

The Inheritance of Loss was the story of a judge living with his granddaughter, Sai, at the foothills of the Himalayan mountains. The judge was cold-hearted and demanding, and Sai found more fatherly comfort for their cook. The cook told her stories of grandeur from the judge’s past life (as well as his own). The cook dreamed of the day when his son, Biju, settles successfully into New York City so the cook could live with him. Interwoven with this story were commentaries on colonialism, Indian culture (particularly their caste system), immigration and nationalism.

Where The Inheritance of Loss excelled was in the illumination of Indian culture and the treatment of Indian immigrants in the U.S. I learned tremendously about both themes from this book. I often interact with Indians at work, and I discovered a newfound appreciation for their culture and how hard it is to acculturate into my country.

However, there were parts in this novel that just dragged for me. Perhaps the plot and character development were too subtle for my reading taste. In areas where the story didn’t seem to advance, I found myself skipping pages. I don’t think I missed much by doing so either.

I believe that The Inheritance of Loss is one of those books people either gush over or shrug at. I enjoyed Desai’s writing style, her humor and her subtle touches, and I would read another novel by her. I would recommend this novel to fans of Booker Prize winners with one piece of advice: bring your patience when you read this novel.( )

J's Review - The Inheritance of Loss

I finally finished The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai. I was so looking forward to reading this book, as I had heard nothing but good things about it. I even asked a woman on BART if she were enjoying, as she was reading it while on the way into the city, and she said that she was engrossed, and couldn't pull herself away. I started this book almost a month ago, and I'm sad to say that I had a really difficult time getting into it. It's sad, because the book is beautifully written. It's the congruent story of a retired judge in Northern India, his granddaughter, his cook, and the cook's son, who has left to find his fortune in New York. All of this during the Kalimpong uprising in the mid 1980s. From Wikipedia, about Kalimpong, which gives a bit of background to the story:

Kalimpong is a hill town nestled in the Shiwalik Hills (or Lower Himalaya) in the Indian state of West Bengal.

Between 1986 and 1988, the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland and Kamtapur based on ethnic lines grew strong. Riots between the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), led by C K Pradhan, and the West Bengal government reached a standoff after a forty-day strike. The town was virtually under a siege, leading the state government to call in the Indian army to maintain law and order. This led to the formation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, a body that was given semi-autonomous powers to govern the district. Though Kalimpong is now peaceful, the issue of a separate state still lingers. In July 2004, the generally tranquil town was catapulted into national and international headlines after Maninder Pal Singh Kohli, a murderer wanted by Scotland Yard, was traced and found to be residing in Kalimpong.

The Inheritance of Loss shifts between the third world of this town and its surrounding area and the first world of New York, where Biju, the son of the cook, has illegally immigrated to try for a better life. But there he finds mostly humiliation, hard work, and very little pay. The book concentrates on the pain of exile and the arrows still slung and festering from the colonialist era.

He could not talk to his father; there was nothing left between them but emergency sentences, clipped telegram lines shouted out as if in the midst of a war. They were no longer relevant to each other's lives except for the hope that they would be relevant. He stood with his head still in the phone booth studded with bits of stiff chewing gum and the usual FuckShitCockDickPussyLoveWar, swastikas, and hearts shot with arrows mingling in a dense graffiti garden, too sugary too angry too perverse-the sick sweet rotting mulch of the human heart.

If he continued his life in New York, he might never see his pitaji again. It happened all the time; ten years passed, fifteen, the telegram arrived, or the phone call, the parent was gone and the child was too late. Or they returned and found they'd missed the entire last quarter of a lifetime, their parents like photograph negatives. And there were worse tragedies. After the initial excitement was over, it often became obvious that the love was gone; for affection was only a habit after all, and people, they forget, or they become accustomed to its absence. They returned and found just the facade; it had been eaten from inside, like Cho Oyu being gouged by termites from within.

So, why couldn't I get sucked into this story? Why was it that the TV, the internet, cooking, and even cleaning pulled me away from the story? I'm not sure. I found much of the writing to be hauntingly beautiful, but the story ultimately unsatisfying. When I finished it the other night, I'm sorry to say that I was relieved, and ready to move on to my next book.

The Inheritance of Loss won the Man Booker Prize in 2006, and I read it for both my Book Awards Reading Challenge and my Man Booker Challenge.

The Inheritance of Loss - 3M's Review

The Inheritance of Loss
by
Kiran Desai

2005, 318 pp.

Winner: Booker Prize, NBCC

Rating: 3




While this book has garnered much critical acclaim, I found it very difficult to complete. It took me over two months to get through it. Once I put it down, I just wasn't compelled to pick it up again. It sort of felt like a school assignment. Luckily, the last 1/3 of the book went by much faster than the first 2/3. Before reading, I would highly recommend doing a little research if you are ignorant (like I was) of Indian culture or history. One link that shed a little light on the subject for me was here.

There are two settings for the book--America and Kalimpong. Sai lives with her grandfather, a former judge, at the foothills of the Himalayas. She falls in love with Gyan, her tutor, who is sympathetic to the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF). The clash of ideals between the Indians who want change and those who wish to retain aspects of British colonialism is one of the two main conflicts in the novel.

The other conflict is that of the Indians who emigrate to the United States and the conditions of their lives once they live there. Biju, who is the son of the Judge's cook, is one of the lucky few who get a visa to go to America. But once he is there, is he really better off? The novel asks the question -- how much does each person care about their individual culture, nationality, and family. What does our "inheritance" mean to us?

While I appreciate these themes and do think the writing was brilliant at times, I wouldn't recommend this book for most readers.

The Inheritance of Loss - Wendy's Review

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 3 -

Kiran Desai has written a novel of depth and complexity, filled with multiple characters and beautiful, lyrical prose which explores such themes as colonialism, illegal immigration and political strife. I will admit to being somewhat overwhelmed at times due to my ignorance of Indian history, class systems and politics. In fact, this book forced me to do something I seldom do - research the history of the time and geography of the area. What I discovered is a country which is vast in its scope and complicated in its history. For those readers with extensive knowledge about this region, Desai's book will resonate. For those like myself who do not have that knowledge base, this novel will lose some of its power, but is worth reading anyway.

Desai artfully weaves together the stories of several characters, moving from the present day (1980s) to their past histories without a glitch. She examines life in the town of Kalimpong, a hill town nestled in the lower Himalaya of West Bengal, where cultures collide. Kalimpong has a rich history and was the site of violent riots between the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) and the West Bengal government between 1986 and 1988. Desai's novel drops its characters into the midst of this chaos and allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the vast cultural rifts between the people.

The novel centers around a retired Judge, his granddaughter Sai, the cook, the cook's son Biju and Gyan who is Sai's tutor. All these characters are flawed and seeking fulfillment, and all experience loss as the tale unravels. The Judge, a surly and unhappy man, has little love in his heart for anyone except his dog, Mutt. He is filled with hatred for other Indians, wishing instead he had been born English. Biju also experiences this ambivalence for his own people which seems spawned by his experience of rejection and racism as an illegal immigrant living in America.

The habit of hate had accompanied Biju and he found that he possessed an awe of white people, who arguably had done India great harm, and a lack of generosity regarding almost everyone else, who had never done a single harmful thing to India. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 86 -

Biju's father (the cook) has sent his only son to America to seek a better life. The cook hopes for contentment and dignity which he believes will come with Biju's success.

He imagined sofa TV bank account. Eventually Biju would make enough and the cook would retire. He would receive a daughter-in-law to serve him food, crick-crack his toes, grandchildren to swat like flies. Time might have died in the house that sat on the mountain ledge, its lines grown indistinct with moss, its roof loaded with ferns, but with each letter, the cook trundled toward a future.
- From The Inheritance of Loss, page 20 -

Sai, having come to live with her grandfather after her parents die, imagines a life of love.

Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 3 -

Finally, Gyan who tutors Sai longs to be part of the political changes. A Nepali who feels torn between his attraction toward Sai and his cultural roots, Gyan is perhaps the saddest character in the book.

He wasn't a bad person. He didn't want to fight. The trouble was that he'd tried to be part of the larger questions, tried to become part of politics and history. Happiness had a smaller location, though this wasn't something to flaunt, of course; very few would stand up and announce, "Actually I'm a coward," but his timidity might be disguised, well, in a perfectly ordinary existence situated between meek contours. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 299 -

As The Inheritance of Loss unfolded, I was struck by the depth of the prose. Desai reveals the rigid adherence to the class system in simple ways, such as when a maid tells her employer the story of falling in love with a Rai although she herself is a Sherpa.

Before one knew it one could slide into areas of the heart that should be referred to only between social equals. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 75 -

Desai uncovers the pain of being an illegal immigrant by allowing the reader to see through Biju's eyes as he struggles to find work, sleeps in a basement with rats nibbling on his hair, and longs to return to his homeland.

The issues of colonialism and globalization are constant themes in the novel. It speaks to Desai's gift as a writer that she tackles these immense issues with ease using eloquent prose.

Tenzing was certainly the first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.
- From The Inheritance of Loss, page 171 -

This Sai had learned. This underneath, and on top a flat creed: cake was better than laddoos, fork spoon knife better than hands, sipping the blood of Christ and consuming a wafer of his body was more civilized than garlanding a phallic symbol with marigolds. English was better than Hindi.
- From The Inheritance of Loss, page 33 -

I found myself falling into the rhythm of this novel, absorbing the flavors and sights of a foreign land and striving to understand its people. There are so many facets to The Inheritance of Loss, it is hard to categorize it. I believe Desai has written a novel which fully encompasses the Indian experience. I was touched by how the characters sought out their dreams and futures by looking outside their culture, religion and country when perhaps the answers lay closer to home. Desai touches on this as well at the end of the book when Biju, who is now far less innocent, contemplates the steady stream of immigration from India to America.

This way of leaving your family for work had condemned them over several generations to have their hearts always in other places, their minds thinking about people elsewhere; they could never be in a single existence at one time. - From The Inheritance of Loss, page 342 -

Kiran Desai has written an exquisite novel which is deserving of the Booker Award and its place on the New York Times Most Notable Fiction list. This is a novel to be savored for its stunning prose, complex characters and finely captured sense of place.

Recommended rated 4.25/5; read my original review here.

The Inheritance of Loss - Laura's Review

The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai
324 pages

First sentence: All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.

Reflections: The Inheritance of Loss won the Booker Prize in 2006. The novel is set in India during the 1980s, and the plot centered around political conflict. I'm sure if I had more knowledge of the situation in India at that time, I would have appreciated the novel more. Kiran Desai's prose is lyrical and beautiful. It was her writing that held my interest.

I failed to identify with most of the characters. Each of the main characters is an outsider: for various reasons they are not in their home country or have spent so much time away from India that they feel out of place. For example, two elderly women who spent extensive time in England, ensure they always have on hand "familiar comforts" such as English foods and clothing. This I could relate to, having spent 4 years away from my home country. Although it was a fantastic experience, many times I felt like an outsider and knew I would never be fully part of the local community. I've been surprised to feel even more of an outsider since returning "home." Living abroad changes you in many ways. It's made me stronger and more thoughtful, and increased my curiosity about other cultures. Unfortunately there are few I can share this experience with so it remains a somewhat hidden part of who I am ...

The original review can be found here.