About a decade ago, I read A Fine Balance. It has been written on my heart ever since.This book is “The Grapes of Wrath” set in India.Mistry introduces the characters slowly, giving each one a brilliant color, forcing the reader’s heart to sing. A Fine Balance is about many things but certainly how many hard-working people who merely want to have an ordinary life are kicked about by the senseless miseries of the world and the beauty of kindness, how such simple acts can mean a great deal.Simply ...

Brutal, awful book about India in the aftermath of partition and in the midst of the catastrophic State of Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi.If I hadn't already read several firsthand accounts from this time, I might have questioned whether anyone could possibly suffer as many atrocities as the characters do in this book. Extreme poverty, inter-caste violence, forced sterilization, the obliteration of basic human rights... I knew about some of what went on during this time, but I don't think I...

Audiobook narrated by Vikas Adam. A format I highly recommend for this novel. “Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: ‘All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay.’ ” “Yeats?” guessed Maneck. The proofreader nodded, “You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between...

Like most Americans, I remember clearly the date September 11, 2001. I recall where I was standing when I first heard about the attack on the Twin Towers. My first child, a son, was almost eight months old at the time. My first reaction was fear; later, sorrow and grief set in. In my mind ran the thought that life as I knew it would never be the same again. My son would grow up in a world dominated by the unknown and the constant threat of danger. How could I possibly protect him from such uncer...

“You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.’ ” A Fine BalanceI sometimes take a moment to focus on the corner of my office. The way the two walls come together forming a line, a demarcation. I think of it as bringi...

Liking this book makes no sense. Not only are its characters subjected to like, the bleakest set of circumstances ever, but then those circumstances are presented to the reader with such an alarming degree of authorial detachment that you almost have to wonder whether Mistry himself—fed up with the unending series of hardships his characters are required to endure—didn’t just raise his arms in the air and say, “Oh, fuck it.” And yet I could not tear myself away from this train wreck.A Fine Balan...

But rest assured: This tragedy is not a fiction. All is True. Hence started my journey of a fine book, A Fine Balance. I have no sane excuse for my ignorance about Rohinton Mistry novels. I just didn’t have a single clue about him or his achievements till I joined Goodreads. Yes!! Though it’s not a big deal as one is not supposed to know everything but here’s a writer of Indian origin, writing unbelievably great books about Indians and is still remain unacknowledged by a common Indian reader is ...

This is probably the most depressing book I have ever read in my entire life. Not only is its chronicling of four lives bleak and without the slightest hint of hope or redemption, but it does this with a comprehensive scope and an unforgiving manner. Even re-reading it, knowing what was going to happen, did not mitigate my sadness. If anything, it amplified my emotions, because for all of the good things that happen in this book, the moments of joy, I knew how it was all going to go wrong. And t...

Rohinton Mistry has written three whopping novels set in India, Such a Long Journey, A Fine Balance, and Family Matters, and they're all brilliant. He doesn't have pyrotechnic prose like the DeLillos and Pynchons, he's the tortoise to their hares, he plods on with his careful beautiful pictures of the details of people's lives, the complexities and the horrors and the unnoticed pools of affection, where the money comes from and where it goes, how they get through the day and how they don't - his...

I stayed up all night to finish this book, because the climax is simply unputdownable. I am hesitant to formally review it because it's one of those few books that can't be confined within the bounds of a critique or summary, and one that is so magnificent and moving that the idea of reviewing it makes me feel insolent already! So I'll just note what I feel about the book, and the kind of effect it's had on me.It's grim. Very grim. There are moments of tragicomedy, of overjoyed glimpses of the s...