probably the best book I have ever read...

books:


	• A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club) Rohinton Mistry Vintage, 2001 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 557 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

probably the best book I have ever read...

I hate to use superlatives,but I think this book is different. One part of the explanation is that I have lived in Bombay(mumbai) and experienced atleast a fraction of the life you find described here.
Mistry has done an amazing job stick the the prose ("actually speaking that is not my job...") ,he has used English they way we use in it India. To anyone who has been home(India), this will tug at the heart strings, for, this is a language in itself. Mistry does not mince words or waste emotion and time over mourning. The events are fiction but have been played out a million times over in various flavours. And continue even today: read the Indian newspapers-lower castes are paraded naked and made to eat human excreatment on a fairly regular basis.
The book is almost epic, maybe even Dickensonion( somebody discription not mine). The book offers so much hope, but is so realistic. This was one book which actually depressed me for a short while( no book or movie has yet done that), yet has also given me hope and made my day more than once. If you are an Indophile or love all things Indian, this book is for you.
If I could I would give it seven stars out of 5.

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loved it but depressing

It was well written and captivating. I thought though his characters were too one dimensional...like he could have develeoped them more. He was really descriptive and I could really imagine seeing what he was describing. The stories and ending was thought provoking. Like was the whole thing just someones depression focussing on only the negative things around him? Don't wnt to give up anything else but do reccomend it.

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A Fine Balance

This book is written from multiple perspectives, thus, allows the reader valuable insight into what life then was like. I would recommend it for someone who is looking for a book with depth rather than a shallow storyline - it is not a "feel good" book - but certainly very captivating and worth reading. I think someone comes away with a greater appreciation for his/her blessings after reading this book - I recommend it.

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On balance, a fine book

A modern version of an old-fashioned novel, A Fine Balance held me from the first page. Admittedly I have a weakness for fiction set in contemporary India, but Mistry's seemingly effortless ability to take me into the lives of people so foreign from my own experience was overpowering. I say an old fashioned novel because everything is wrapped up perhaps a bit too neatly at the end. The novel succeeds at so many levels, as a fascinating glimpse into Indian culture, as an engaging story of friendship and the realities of the effects of time and circumstance on friendship, as action and adventure -- I really can't recommend it highly enough!

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Excellent writing, bad ending

This is such a beautifully narrated story, with such realism and detail, that I was grateful to simply read it. Although I cared deeply for the characters, and couldn't stop reading to find out what would happen to them, I wasn't hoping for a dramatic ending that 'solved' everything or tied up all the knots. It's not that kind of a story. But the epilogue, I found, was indeed dramatic and hard to believe.

**Spoilers Ahead**
All that Dina wants is her independence, but she ultimately has to go live with her brother, who notes that Dina's fighting spirit has been defeated. The Chamar tailors fight and undergo so much difficulty to break out of their traditional trade and become tailors, but what do they become in the end? Castrated, crippled beggars! The rent-collector also becomes a beggar. Maneck is always hurt about being separated from his family, and finally when he makes his peace with his parents, and lets the reader think he will, at least, find some contentment, he is broken by the sad states the tailors and Dina are reduced to, and commits suicide. He has no thought for his mother waiting all these years for him, her only hope.

Realism need not be all sad and depressing. Mistry shows it himself in the story, but he breaks the feeble thread of hope on which his characters survive, leaving them crippled, and precariously balanced. I simply couldn't buy Maneck's suicide, and Ishvar's losing his legs. It's unrealistic for him to wait for his legs to become nearly black before seeking medical help.

While the book seems well paced and balanced, the ending, and epilogue look forced and hurried. For this, A Fine Balance loses a star and drops from excellent to v. good.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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.

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