Product Description

Vikram Seth's novel is at its core a love story, the tale of Lata - and her mother's attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. Set in post-Independence India and involving the lives of four large families and those who orbit them, it is also a vast panoramic exploration of a whole continent at a crucial hour as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great General Election and the chance to map its own destiny. 'A SUITABLE BOY may prove to be the most fecund as well as the most prodigious work of the latter half of this century - perhaps even the book to restore the serious reading public's faith in the contemporary novel ... You should make time for it. It will keep you company for the rest of your life' Daniel Johnson, The Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8759 in Books
• Published on: 1994-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1504 pages

Review
This is a splendid, massive family saga, set in post-Independence India. The legacy of the Raj is brought under the author's good-humoured but absolutely just scrutiny; Mrs Rupa Mehra goes in search of a good match for her emancipated daughter, Lata; keeping her company, the reader begins to understand the real wealth of India. Saeed Jaffrey, the actor, adds: The opportunity to read this novel came when the BBC's World Service invited me to read it for them in 20 15-minute episodes in 1997. I am deeply familiar with the Uttar Pradesh background and the characters in the novel are so real; I came across people like Mrs Roopa Mehra and family as a child. Seth has honestly, and with humour and understanding, captured the period and its characters, including the ones based on the Czech 'Bata' lot. (Kirkus UK)

Set in newly independent India, Nehru's early 1950's, this adipose saga counterbalances a book of social manners - the marrying off of a well-to-do educated young woman, Lata Mehra - with a historical account (even at the level of transcribed parliamentary debate) of the subcontinent trying to find its societal bearings vis-a-vis language, religion, and the redistribution of estate-lands taken off the hands of the elite. Set mainly in Brahmpur, the story encompasses four well-off families, with a focus mostly on the younger members - poets, academics, playboys, newlyweds - who stitch a pattern of peccadillo through their elders' expectations. Meanwhile, Seth, whose California novel in verse, The Golden Gate (1986), was clever and energetic in concept but dull and soapy in final effect, falls into the same trap here: lots of stuff obviously - at a marathon 1300-plus pages - but characters made out of cliche, with background-India the very stuffed pillow of local color that keeps them standing. The book, too, fairly squeaks with its own pleasure in itself, larded with poetry and a general recommendation of art over politics and money: the characters it spends the most time over are narcissists. Anyone wanting to read how a marriageable daughter can X-ray a whole society ought to let this cream-puff-wrapped-in-a-cinder-block pass and return to Tanizaki's classic Japanese masterpiece, The Makioka Sisters. Fat (the publishing world's delayed reparation for Rushdie's Satanic Verses?) but fatuous. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Vikram Seth was born in 1952. He trained as an economist and has lived for several years each in England, California, China and India. He is the author of A Suitable Boy, which was an international number one bestseller, An Equal Music and several other novels. He has also written five volumes of poetry including Beastly Tales.

Customer Reviews

A Suitable Book
If ever a book could bring to life another culture in another time, this is it. Loosely based on the search for the eponymous suitable boy for Lata, the spirited daughter of Mrs Rupa Mehra, the joy of this book is its wonderful characters and locations and, most of all, a sense of life and living in post-partition India.

This is a book in which to luxuriate; to ease yourself into the lives of the characters with whom you will journey over the 1400 pages of exquisite prose. The only reason to put this book down is to give your arms a rest!

I would unreservedly recommend this as my favourite book of the 2nd half of the 20th century. A book for lazy afternoons and long summer evenings. Spellbinding.

Needlessly long with non directional plot
This review will probably go against the grain but I bought this book on the premise that it was an award winning, must read and had not heard a bad thing said about the book. Being a bit of a book worm it didn't take as long to read as I initially thought it would, but I did find the story was more long winded than required. There was no discernable plot as the story just meandered through various sub plots that never quite ended satisfactorily. The abrupt ending did an injustice to the marathon reading effort it takes to work your way through it. Nevertheless, the amusing characters and rich use of language were enjoyable though overall I feel this was a pointless story with no plot development which I can't bring myself to recommend to anyone else.

GREAT!
This book was amazing! The start was a little slow but once you get into it and get familiar with the characters, you really start to enjoy it. I did skip a few pages here and there, (probably 5-10 in total) but it didnt take anything away from the story. Finishing the entire book feels like such an accomplishment but you begin to miss the characters and wish the book was longer.