Book Review: The Inheritance of Loss Novel ,by Kiran Desai

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Introduction

Author: Kiran Desai

Language: English

Genre: novel Psychological Fiction Domestic Fiction,

About the Author

Kiran Desai is an Indian author. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. In January 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of 20 "most influential" global Indian women.

Awards: Booker Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, more

Parents: Anita Desai, Ashvin Desai

Education: Hollins University, Columbia University, Bennington College, more

Nominations: Booker Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

Nationality: American, Indian

Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, (2006) was widely praised by critics throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. It won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, as well as the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. Desai became the youngest-ever woman to win the Booker Prize at the age of 35 (this was later broken by Eleanor Catton in 2013).

In August 2008, Desai was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion program hosted by Michael Berkeley on BBC Radio 3. In May 2007 she was the featured author at the inaugural Asia House Festival of Cold Literature. Set in India in the mid-1980s, the novel has at its center a Cambridge-educated Indian judge living out his retirement in Kalimpong, near the Himalayas, with his granddaughter until their lives are disrupted by Nepalese insurgents.

Review

The story centers around the lives of Biju and Sai. Biju is an Indian living in the United States illegally, son of a cook who works for Sai's grandfather. Sai is an orphan living in mountainous Kalimpong with her maternal grandfather, Jemubhai Patel; the cook; and a dog named Mutt. 

This book is not a happy story let's be clear and it doesn't have a happy ending. The story is slow it moves over the years but the characters are stagnant. Sometimes you would be reading too fast just because you want something to happen but it just doesn't. 

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It is not fiction, it might be fiction but the story is like real life because not everything is happy, and it's sometimes difficult to accept as you care about the characters. What is really bad is the ending, the writer takes so much time to develop the characters only to end so abruptly, it lacks a finality you are thirsty for more, but maybe the whole book is like that, it leaves you wanting to wait for more. 

The various themes which are intertwined in the novel The Inheritance of Loss are globalization, multiculturalism, insurgency, poverty, isolation, and issues related to loss of identity. The Inheritance of Loss deals with diverse cultural customs and conventions. 

The novel majorly depicts Indian, British and American cultures. Interactions among these cultures are shown concerning colonialism, postcolonialism, and globalization. If we were in the world of Salman Rushdie, then Gyan and Sai would achieve a sensual communion that would stand against all the misunderstandings of ethnic and political, and class hatreds. 

But the point of this novel constantly brought home to us in small and big ways, is how individuals are always failing to communicate. Desai flicks from a failed telephone call to a failed marriage, a lost dog to lost parents, and the cumulative experience is of atomization and thwarted yearning. 

I think this constant sense of disappointment is the reason why, although I admired this novel, I can't say I loved it. It's not surprising that Desai's characters occasionally refer to VS Naipaul, who has something of the same chastened view about the possibility of emotional fulfillment. 

The only emotional connection that endures is that between the cook and his son, and even this is so uncertain, despite a momentarily hopeful ending, that it hardly lightens the book. Otherwise, we are left with Sai, and her sense, which is also the sensation experienced by the reader, of being battered by overlapping stories that drown out her own desire for the reassurance of love.

"Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own tiny happiness and live safely within it." The story centers around the lives of Biju and Sai. Biju is an Indian living in the United States illegally, son of a cook who works for Sai's grandfather. 

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Sai is an orphan living in mountainous Kalimpong with her maternal grandfather, Jemubhai Patel; the cook; and a dog named Mutt. Her mother was a Gujarati and her father was a Zoroastrian orphan himself.[4] Author Desai alternates the narration between these two points of view. The action of the novel takes place in 1986.

Why should you buy this novel?

The result is a mood that is claustrophobic and disorienting. The rural, rustic setting, along with the emotional isolation is established through the use of figurative language, details, and point-of-view. The various themes which are intertwined in the novel The Inheritance of Loss are globalization, multiculturalism, insurgency, poverty, isolation, and issues related to loss of identity.


Rating for this book:- 4.8/5

You can easily get this book from Amazon: The Inheritance of Loss

Written By - Govinda Kumar

Edited By - Anamika Malik