How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Very good
Advantages:
well written and interesting . .
Disadvantages:
lenghty passages that could have been trimmed down
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Born in 1952 in Calcutta, India, VIKRAM SETH was educated at Oxford, Stanford University and Nanjing University..He has travelled widely and lived in Britain,China and the USA.He now lives in Calcutta, India
His first novel, THE GOLDEN GATE : A NOVEL IN VERSE(1986), describes the experiences of a group of friends living in California.. His second novel A SUITABLE BOY, at 1347 pages ,is one of the longest novels ever published in a single volume in the English language...It won the prestigious Booker's award for 1994...
Set in the post-indpendance India in the early 1950's, it deals with the efforts of a widowed mother looking for a SUITABLE BOY for her daughter...The novel begins with a wedding and closes with a wedding...It is a very colorful novel with accounts of festivals,the exotic food and the rich and flashy lifestyles of the rich Indians..
A Suitable Boy is a superbly well-written book, and Vikram Seth's style of writing is simple, unpresuming , but eminently readable to the last page...With the enormous number of characters that pass through Vikram Seth manages to keep the plot interesting througout..
One gets to know the historical and political details of the post independence India from the point of view of the various characters in the book..the power struggle that is taking place between the various political leaders and the effect it has on the evryday lives of the families around them..
It is also the story of, several Indian families whose paths intersect continually over a period of 18 months...and it is a love story.....And above all it is the story of ROOPA MEHRA whose youngest daughter LATA remains unmarried, and the widowed Mrs. Mehra is bent on rectifying the condition by enlisting her friends and relatives to help her find Lata "a Suitable Boy"..
Whereas Lata has her own plans..as she tells a friend that she does not want an arranged marriage, as is common among Indian families. There are several suitors , but, Lata is attracted to Kabir, a handsome classmate of hers, sadly according to her mother he is a MUSLIM..those were the days when inter religious marriages were frowned upon....
There are other stories unfolding, that of Lata's brothers and their families..the UNSUITABLE marriage of her brother which further depresses and angers Roopa , she carries on with her mission nevertheless...
Amidst all these Roopa is determined that Lata marries the boy of her choice.....there is a lot of humor involved, especially with all those comical letters that Roopa" writes Off"..... Letters comically phrased , sometimes beginning right in the middle of a paragraph , (the rest of it has already been told by Roopa in her own thoughts ), puting down words exactly as she thinks,to all and sundry while arranging and manipulating things to work her way, which is mainly finding the right boy for Lata... And, the extra marital affair of her daughter in law, and Roopa's reactions to these episodes, Roopa's character is well etched and one can easily identify with it...There are scores of Roopa's around us.
Lata as the strong willed daughter proves to be a constant headache for Roopa, as she fails to fall in step with any of her manipulations or arrangements and carries on with her love affair meeting Kabir and getting more involved with him.....
It is finally Lata who makes her choice between her 3 suitors..the Handsome Kabir,A Businessman of her mother's choice and a Writer friend of her's......Roopa too is happy as, some of her arrangements at "Helping" Lata 'Fall in love' and yet the same time have a marriage 'Arranged' by her have both succeeded...
A SUITABLE BOY is a novel whose scope ranges from the politics of a great man to the maneuvering of a mother, from an epic account of a nation at infancy, fighting for stability, to the torment of a young girl in love....
CHARACTERS IN SUITABLE BOY
Families form the backbone of this novel
The four main families mentioned in the novel are:
1) The Mehras - Mrs. Rupa Mehra, a mother searching for a suitable boy for her daughter. Arun, Savita, Varun and Lata - Mrs. Mehra's four children. Arun is married to Meenakshi Chatterji, Savita to Pran Kapoor.
Lata - Mrs. Rupa Mehra's youngest child. A large portion of the novel as well as the title describes her mother's determination to marry Lata off to "a suitable boy."
2) The Kapoors - Mr. Mahesh Kapoor, Mrs. Mahesh Kapoor and their 3 children Veena, Pran and Maan.
3) The Khans - Nawab Sahib of Baitar and his 3 children Zainab, Imtiaz and Firoz.
4) The Chatterjis - Mr. Justice Chatterji and Mrs. Chatterji and their children Amit, Meenakshi (married to Arun Mehra), Dipankar, Kakoli and Tapan...
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