Product Description

Ved Mehta became blind as a boy in India but for 30 years lived in the grip of a fantasy that he could see. What he lacked, or so he thought, was love, sex and marriage. And so began a series of love affairs, or love disasters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1301108 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
All for Love, Ved Mehta's clear and precise account of his struggle to find love and the perfect relationship, is a curiously engrossing read. Mehta, made blind at the age of four by a bout of meningitis, grew up indulging in the fantasy that he could see, or at least that his blindness was no different to seeing. Having forgotten what it was to see he became "incapable of distinguishing between sight and the absence of sight". A successful writer for the New Yorker, Mehta endeavoured to fill the area of his life where he felt empty and inadequate and embarked on a series of painful relationships. There is something horribly self-indulgent about a book of this nature but any initial qualms about this give over to curiosity at Mehta's apparent keenness for environment and people, as though the reader too can get sucked into Mehta's fantasy of sight. His search for love, the clumsy relationships, the longing and the loss, is touching. Mehta writes with an almost clinical honesty, picking over his memories, old letters, analysing his mistakes, contextualising these episodes with his strange blind childhood. This tone can seem slightly cold but it manages to offset the indulgent passions of the young Ved Mehta nicely, and the clarity of hindsight is what drives this book beyond mere personal history. Mehta's discovery is that his search for love is a search for self-understanding and that only when this is reached can any happy relationship be forged. --Iain Robinson

Review
'A story of pain and humiliation the like of which I have rarely encountered outside fiction. I kept thinking of Robert Graves and his muses...the book is remarkable. Mehta is a great stylist; combine this with a story of searing honesty and you have a book that demands an intense response' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times 'Fascinating and revealing' Daily Telegraph 'This is a book about a man's love affairs. Mehta's unravelling of his inner conflicts is absorbing, moving, and ultimately uplifting' Scotland on Sunday 'Written with a calm lucidity...this is more than the story of an exceptionally brave and gifted blind man. It is a subtle examination of the relationship between thought and feeling, the crucial links between the ability to love and the ability to work' Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Ved Mehta was born in 1934. He was educated at both Harvard and Oxford following which he pursued life as a writer, travelling and writing for New Yorker magazine. He has written many books the first of which was published when he was just twenty years old.

Customer Reviews

A very touching account of personal love
I bought this book on a whim hoping that I might find it interesting. The book surpassed all my expectations, proving to be an intense read with excellent prose and very powerful observations indeed. Ved Mehta has written a very personal and touching account of his relationships with four women, each different in terms of background and personality. And yet, one is taken aback by their similarities.
The most beautiful aspect of Mehta's narrative of each relationship is that, despite their sad endings, each relationship leaves one feel strangely optimistic on the way they contributed the author's life. Each relationship has created enough intensity of mutual feeling that outlasted their physical lifespans. One never comes out feeling that any of the relationships was in vain.
On a personal note, there was a lot that I could identify with. The book has helped me look at my past relationships with a smile (oh when have I felt this way before?) and the ups and downs of my present relationship and with a good dose of stoicism.
In short, it is a beautiful book. Read it if have the capacity for feeling and if you believe in the power of human love.
Thank you Ved Mehta - this book has enriched my life.

Mirror of love
As part of his continuing autobiographical series of books, this latest offering is one of the most personal of Ved Mehta's books and describe in excruciating detail his four attempts at giving and receiving love; that he is blind is, as always, incidental to the narrative and one wouldn't guess it but for the fact that he provides some details about his blindness at the start of the narrative.

The first two accounts are fairly short and are a build-up to the remaining two which involve the reader at a very deep and disconcerting level - almost making one wish that the author hadnt been so very frank in analysing his and his love's actions, in real-time and in hindsight. More than anything else, it highlights the mistakes one makes while loving and holds a mirror at all the lovers of the world, who are more interested in receiving than in giving.

At times, Ved draws a fairly unflattering portrait of himself while at other times, he is the victim of the mental vagaries of the objects of his affection. It is almost surprising that he was able to survive all these disappointments and go on leading a life which seemed fairly balanced and inspiring at the same time.

The book is in the mould of a modern day version of all the Oriental classic stories of love unrequieted or unfulfulled like Laila/Majnun and Shirin/Farhad, but at the same time, because of its intensely autobiographical nature leaves us with a feeling of great sympathy and admiration for the author.