A Suitable Boy: A Novel (Modern Classics)

Hello Book-Lovers of the Amazon World,Today, I finished reading "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth. I spent most of the month of July '08, except for a 9 day holiday in Ontario, Canada, reading this massive and informative book about Post-Independence India.Mr. Vikram Seth has populated the story with memorable charactors, such as Lata Mehra, Mrs. Rupha Mehra, Mahesh Kapoor and his family,the Nawab Sahib and many others that flit in and out of the novel as it progresses to the conclusion.I may be wrong, but I think Mr Seth wrote himself into the story as Amit Chatterji, the Poet and author who was one of the young men who was trying to become Lata's husband.The descriptive language made you feel you were in Bramphur ( a fictional city ) and Calcutta( The main venues). The great festivals of the Hindu, Muslim and Bengali and Punjabi peoples were vividly portrayed.The National Elections of 1952 makes our election process seem tame by comparison.Some people have compared this story to Eliot's "Middlemarch" and Dicken's "Bleak House". Well, it may be true,but, I havent finished "Bleak House", yet, and I couldnt get into "Middlemarch" ( the language was too Victorian for my tastes). I traded the Eliot book up in Canada for 2 used books in D. Gabaldon's "Outlander" series. I am going to start reading them next.I STRONGLY RECOMMEND this book. This massive book looks intimidating but is well-worth the time and money to have in your personal library.Until my next review, keep on reading, it's cheaper ( in the long run ) and more enjoyable than watching the "[...]".Post script...I've read this book twice in the last ten years in the paperback edition . The print is very small and I am wondering if this book will come to e-book status via.Kindle. I really want to read this again but I don't want to strain my eyes doing it. I know Audible has an abridged version but I'd rather have the whole story on kindle. If Amazon is reading this, can you please get the publisher to furnish this item on your massive kindle list.The vm.

And I took my time, interspersed with quicker reads. I came to this book after the Charming novel The Reading List, which is a contemporary Indian-Asian community with characters linked through an anonymous reading list found in a library book. This was the only one I hadn't read so...wonderful characters, language, history of India post Ghandi/colonization and the complexities of caste, economic class, religion are explored both cynically and tenderly. The politics a bit dense at times. Fascinating book and almost abrupt to conclude.

As usual, we have the range of diametrically opposing reviews here on Amazon: people who loved the book, people who hated it. That simply demonstrates that different things appeal to different people. So which are you, the reader who has yet to take on this large book?I can offer only a hint, which is this: if you love long Russian novels, with their slow development of plot and characters, and immensely detailed stories, then you will very likely fall in love with this book, as I did. I'm not a big Tolstoy fan - I find he has too little compassion for his characters - but I love Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov - a huge, sprawling novel very like this one - remains one of the half dozen books that I'd choose if I were stuck on a desert island.By around page 6 of this book I had fallen in love with both the writing style and all the characters, and when it was finally completed I felt like I had been cut off from a family. I never wanted this book to end, and it is still one of my favorite novels, one that a couple of years ago I read aloud to my wife over several weeks (she loved it also). The comparisons of Seth with the great Russian novelists are, for me, not at all misplaced: A Suitable Boy is a major literary achievement. The writing is perfectly balanced, the narrative brilliantly constructed, and the plot is a rich, multi-dimensional story spanning long periods and painted across the broad, evocative canvas that is post-Partition India.If you're still in doubt about whether it's for you, read the first 15 or 20 pages... if you find it slow or otherwise not for you, go elsewhere. But if you love the writing of those opening pages, I can pretty much guarantee that you will love the rest of this remarkable, utterly satisfying novel.

I’m the type of person who HAS to finish a book once I start it. So I was horrified when, after reading this book (on Kindle) for a couple hours, I looked to see how much longer I had to suffer through it & realized that I still had about 1300 pages to go!!! While it did improve somewhat, the problem is that the author has a decent story about an extended family in India which is interspersed with absolutely BORING monologues/dialogues between mainly political characters about (boring) government/political matters. A good publisher should have required him to cut at least 500 pages. Three stars was generous. I’d never recommend to anyone.