Anita Desai, through her short stories and novels, two of which, Clear Light of Day and In Custody, have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is one of the most accomplished and admired chroniclers of middle-class India. In this, her latest novel, she tells the story of plain and lumpish Uma and the cherished, late-born Arun, daughter and son of strict and conventional parents--"MamaPapa" in Uma's mind, so united are they in their unyielding views and dictums. Desai perfectly matches form and content: details are few, the focus narrow, emotions and needs given no place. Uma, as daughter and woman, expects nothing; Arun, as son and male, is lost under the weight of expectation.

Now in her forties, Uma is at home. Attempts at arranged marriages having ended in humiliation and disaster, she is at the beck and call of MamaPapa, with only her collection of bangles and old Christmas cards for consolation.

Arun, at university in Massachusetts, is having to spend the summer with the Patton family in the suburbs: their fridge and freezer full of meat that no one eats, and Mrs Patton desperate to be a vegetarian, like Arun. But what Arun most wants is to be ignored, invisible.

The novel's counterpointing of India and America is a little forced, whereas Desai's focus on the daily round, whether in the Gangetic plain or suburban America, finely delineates the unspoken dramas in both cultures. And her characters, emblematic in their suffering. but capable of their own small rebellions, give Fasting, Feasting its sharp bite. --Ruth Petrie

Two lifestyles to sink the spirits, 20 Sep 2008
Poor Uma. Drab, a dismal failure at school and stifled by the benign tyranny of MamaPapa in a close-knit traditional Indian family, she then begins to suffer from fits. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by her family to marry her off result each time in disgrace and instead she is groomed for a spinster life of domestic servitude. To add to her humiliation, marriage offers pour in for her younger sister and then her even younger brother wins a scholarship to study in the United States.
Lucky him, you would think to escape such a suffocating environment. But think again. During the summer recess when he is obliged to quit the halls of residence, he is ensconced with an American family in white picket-fence New England suburbia. Here we get a glimpse into how it feels to be culturally alienated, not to mention the excess that has turned Americans into a nation of suicide eaters. Well written in clear English prose and in a dry, humorous style (if you can find humour in the oppression and isolation of a young woman, or in bulimia, that is), Fasting, Feasting has a lot to say about the greedy, sanitised way we live in the West without suggesting that we have necessarily let slip any attractive alternatives in our rush to consume.


An unexpected treat, 28 Mar 2008
This is in part, a compelling portrait of a post- colonial Indian (Christian) family and the ruinous effect of India's rigid and feudalistic social conventions - exemplified perhaps by the custom of a bridegroom's family requiring a (usually) extortionate dowry from the bride's father. The first part of the novel follows the misfortunes of Uma, whose education is cut short by her parents when they decide that she must help to raise an unexpected first son, Arun. Uma's parents' attempts to arrange a marriage twice end in disaster and both times, the bridegroom's family swindle a dowry from Uma's father (Papa) but renege on their promises of marriage. In the first part of the novel, Uma's patriarchal; Anglophone father is an especially memorable character. There is for example, a wonderful scene - lasting no more than three quarters of a page - where Uma and her mother, attentive to the last detail of his needs, go through the ceremony of peeling and feeding him an orange, piece by piece. It is like a slow, wordless but vivid cinematic close-up in which the part of the father might easily be played by Om Puri - the brilliant, veteran Indian actor. Papa believes in fact that the only way forward for Indians is for them to abandon vegetarianism (one source of their weakness) become meat eaters and adopt the English tongue. The deeply conservative values and preoccupations of this middle class Indian family are so familiar that, being from Ireland, I felt I could be reading about their landed, rural Irish counterparts. There is a ruthless, financially-driven pragmatism at work, reminiscent of John McGahern's disturbing short story, Korea. I was not surprised to see this novel described as in fact, two novellas. Part two of the novel is almost a different work. It is I think, also better written. This is a novel that gets better the more you read of it and by part two, Desai has moved on to even, deeper and darker territory. Arun, only a fleeting figure and still a child in part one, is now a young adult and sent by his ambitious father to study abroad in Massachusetts. Through the outwardly impassive person of Arun, we witness the perverse American nightmare - the American dream gone wrong and nothing that Arun would have expected before he arrived. We see the stark contrast between affluent, free America and impoverished, socially rigid India. Both societies share inherent contradictions, but what they have in common is that they are both sick - albeit, the causes and symptoms of their respective malaises are different. India's woes are largely a result of its poverty while many of America's are due to a surfeit of wealth and an excess of consumption. This novel was an unexpected treat, with quite a profound message that I immediately wanted to read again. Short listed for the Booker prize in 1999.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai, 23 Feb 2008
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun's disability is visible, but Aruna's exists because of the her society's preconceptions about women.

Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. She wears thick glasses and has fits. And so in the middle class society the family inhabits, Uma can pursue only two possible roles. Either she can be married off, or she can become a labourer, a near slave for the family. The former, of course, is the same as the latter. Only the location is different. For Uma marriage doesn't happen. It does, but it fails before it starts, since the groom was already married and merely wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of both Uma's sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.

The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a faintly comic family trying to cope with their own cultural minority status within India's vastness. It takes awhile for the tragic elements of the story to surface. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, eventually display any honesty or compassion, everyone else being merely selfish, even those who kill themselves to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing but an asset to assist their trade. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl's duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her greater eligibility. So what seemed to be a pleasant family tale of the idiosyncrasies of culture becomes a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. Ugly, unmemorable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that only because she is not even a competitor. She exists on the scraps of life she is allowed.

But what of Arun, the disabled boy? Well he is quite a bright lad. He goes to university in the USA, and to an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what is he to do in the holidays when the college is closed? We can't afford to bring his all the way home, concludes parsimonious Papa.

So Arun lodges with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, an American Dream of sorts, mum, dad, two kids, one of each. But Dad is a laconic type. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none that are realistic. Mom is an emotional wreck. She years for something in her confusion, but has not idea what it might be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.

So through Arun's eyes, and to some extent as a result of his culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle class American life that is utterly dysfunctional. But it is again the women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooking to feed the unappreciative men and the daughter who cannot eat. She fantasises about Arun's cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities for which she yearns. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat wanting to be thin, eating to fast, stuffing sweets until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of female perfection. And Arun witnesses all of this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not self-obsessed.

The title is important. Fasting, Feasting presents apparent opposites, two contrasting, if imbalanced scenarios, India and the USA. It offers two deformed observers, Uma and Arun. It unpicks two contrasting cultures and finds that women are slaves in both. The opposites are thus ultimately similar, hardly opposed.


feasting then starving, 25 Jan 2008
The first part of the book is brilliant. It describes the sometimes dysfunctional aspects of the family, is engaging and enjoyable. The reader really feels for the girl. The second part feels like coming down after a hangover. First the euphoria, then the sinking feeling that things have gone wrong. I felt like giving up reading the end of the book, quite frankly. Still a good book.

moving, 06 Sep 2004
touching, moving and at times acarely realistic. The writing is controled and Desai never falls into the trap of melodrama that so many Indian authors seem unable to avoid.

Before Salman Rushdie had that problem with a certain religious-political figure with a serious need to chill out, he'd already shown he was an important literary force. Quite simply, Midnight's Children is amazing--fun, beautiful, erudite, both fairy tale and political narrative told through a supernatural narrator who is caught between different worlds. Though it's a big book, with big themes of India's nationhood and of ethnic and personal identity, it's far from a dry history lesson. Rushdie tells the story in his own brand of magical realism, with a prose of lyrical, transcendent goofiness.

Two lifestyles to sink the spirits, 20 Sep 2008
Poor Uma. Drab, a dismal failure at school and stifled by the benign tyranny of MamaPapa in a close-knit traditional Indian family, she then begins to suffer from fits. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by her family to marry her off result each time in disgrace and instead she is groomed for a spinster life of domestic servitude. To add to her humiliation, marriage offers pour in for her younger sister and then her even younger brother wins a scholarship to study in the United States.
Lucky him, you would think to escape such a suffocating environment. But think again. During the summer recess when he is obliged to quit the halls of residence, he is ensconced with an American family in white picket-fence New England suburbia. Here we get a glimpse into how it feels to be culturally alienated, not to mention the excess that has turned Americans into a nation of suicide eaters. Well written in clear English prose and in a dry, humorous style (if you can find humour in the oppression and isolation of a young woman, or in bulimia, that is), Fasting, Feasting has a lot to say about the greedy, sanitised way we live in the West without suggesting that we have necessarily let slip any attractive alternatives in our rush to consume.


An unexpected treat, 28 Mar 2008
This is in part, a compelling portrait of a post- colonial Indian (Christian) family and the ruinous effect of India's rigid and feudalistic social conventions - exemplified perhaps by the custom of a bridegroom's family requiring a (usually) extortionate dowry from the bride's father. The first part of the novel follows the misfortunes of Uma, whose education is cut short by her parents when they decide that she must help to raise an unexpected first son, Arun. Uma's parents' attempts to arrange a marriage twice end in disaster and both times, the bridegroom's family swindle a dowry from Uma's father (Papa) but renege on their promises of marriage. In the first part of the novel, Uma's patriarchal; Anglophone father is an especially memorable character. There is for example, a wonderful scene - lasting no more than three quarters of a page - where Uma and her mother, attentive to the last detail of his needs, go through the ceremony of peeling and feeding him an orange, piece by piece. It is like a slow, wordless but vivid cinematic close-up in which the part of the father might easily be played by Om Puri - the brilliant, veteran Indian actor. Papa believes in fact that the only way forward for Indians is for them to abandon vegetarianism (one source of their weakness) become meat eaters and adopt the English tongue. The deeply conservative values and preoccupations of this middle class Indian family are so familiar that, being from Ireland, I felt I could be reading about their landed, rural Irish counterparts. There is a ruthless, financially-driven pragmatism at work, reminiscent of John McGahern's disturbing short story, Korea. I was not surprised to see this novel described as in fact, two novellas. Part two of the novel is almost a different work. It is I think, also better written. This is a novel that gets better the more you read of it and by part two, Desai has moved on to even, deeper and darker territory. Arun, only a fleeting figure and still a child in part one, is now a young adult and sent by his ambitious father to study abroad in Massachusetts. Through the outwardly impassive person of Arun, we witness the perverse American nightmare - the American dream gone wrong and nothing that Arun would have expected before he arrived. We see the stark contrast between affluent, free America and impoverished, socially rigid India. Both societies share inherent contradictions, but what they have in common is that they are both sick - albeit, the causes and symptoms of their respective malaises are different. India's woes are largely a result of its poverty while many of America's are due to a surfeit of wealth and an excess of consumption. This novel was an unexpected treat, with quite a profound message that I immediately wanted to read again. Short listed for the Booker prize in 1999.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai, 23 Feb 2008
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun's disability is visible, but Aruna's exists because of the her society's preconceptions about women.

Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. She wears thick glasses and has fits. And so in the middle class society the family inhabits, Uma can pursue only two possible roles. Either she can be married off, or she can become a labourer, a near slave for the family. The former, of course, is the same as the latter. Only the location is different. For Uma marriage doesn't happen. It does, but it fails before it starts, since the groom was already married and merely wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of both Uma's sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.

The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a faintly comic family trying to cope with their own cultural minority status within India's vastness. It takes awhile for the tragic elements of the story to surface. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, eventually display any honesty or compassion, everyone else being merely selfish, even those who kill themselves to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing but an asset to assist their trade. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl's duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her greater eligibility. So what seemed to be a pleasant family tale of the idiosyncrasies of culture becomes a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. Ugly, unmemorable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that only because she is not even a competitor. She exists on the scraps of life she is allowed.

But what of Arun, the disabled boy? Well he is quite a bright lad. He goes to university in the USA, and to an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what is he to do in the holidays when the college is closed? We can't afford to bring his all the way home, concludes parsimonious Papa.

So Arun lodges with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, an American Dream of sorts, mum, dad, two kids, one of each. But Dad is a laconic type. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none that are realistic. Mom is an emotional wreck. She years for something in her confusion, but has not idea what it might be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.

So through Arun's eyes, and to some extent as a result of his culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle class American life that is utterly dysfunctional. But it is again the women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooking to feed the unappreciative men and the daughter who cannot eat. She fantasises about Arun's cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities for which she yearns. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat wanting to be thin, eating to fast, stuffing sweets until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of female perfection. And Arun witnesses all of this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not self-obsessed.

The title is important. Fasting, Feasting presents apparent opposites, two contrasting, if imbalanced scenarios, India and the USA. It offers two deformed observers, Uma and Arun. It unpicks two contrasting cultures and finds that women are slaves in both. The opposites are thus ultimately similar, hardly opposed.


feasting then starving, 25 Jan 2008
The first part of the book is brilliant. It describes the sometimes dysfunctional aspects of the family, is engaging and enjoyable. The reader really feels for the girl. The second part feels like coming down after a hangover. First the euphoria, then the sinking feeling that things have gone wrong. I felt like giving up reading the end of the book, quite frankly. Still a good book.

moving, 06 Sep 2004
touching, moving and at times acarely realistic. The writing is controled and Desai never falls into the trap of melodrama that so many Indian authors seem unable to avoid.

Rich and beautiful but too cold for me., 22 Nov 2008
The language is as multi-layered and detailed as a Klimt, the imagery, rich and dense as Christmas cake - there's no doubt Midnight's Children is a unique and remarkable book, but I found, at it's core, it was too coldly detached. I never truly connected to Saleem or any of the characters, or the epic, grasshopper story. I was always slightly outside his world, looking in through closed blinds.

Some books - the books that live on in my mind long after - are the ones that embrace you, wrap you in a warm, soft blanket of themselves and draw you in completely and, awed though I was by the literary achievement (and it is an incredible tour de force, almost certainly deserving the over-used `genius' tag) I could never count it amongst my favourites.

It *is*a fantastical, magical, delight of a book. I did like it very much and thoroughly recommend it as a must read for almost everyone really but especially anyone who loves magical realism and vast, epic fantasy worlds. It's clearly a masterpiece - but I doubt very much if I shall want to read it again anytime soon.


Disappointing and dull, 18 Sep 2008
It's hard to live up to the "Booker of Bookers" tag but this comes nowhere near. Rushdie can write: bursts of compelling narrative display that. Unfortunately the whole story is trussed up in that clever "flash-back", "flash-forward" conceit which eventually bored me. No, I didn't finish it. I got a little further than I did with Ulysses, but eventually hurled this into the same Pseud Bin.
I've read somewhere that the author intends the time switching to be like the digressions of an oral storyteller but I think that's like trying to capture ballet in a poem or the moon in a bucket. The device is overused and tiresome. Want a Third World Magic Realism Family Saga? try "House of the Spirits".

An important, and dare I say enjoyable read, 20 Aug 2008
Whatever controversies arise from Rushdie one cannot but marvel at the depths of his imagination. Midnight's Children whilst containing some of the most beautiful language and imagery is no easy read. As with most Rushdie novels we venture into the world of magic realism and we witness the life of a child born on the stroke of midnight hour when Nehru announces the "tryst with dynasty". Born with special powers Saleem is witness through the whirlwind of events that make up India's first thirty years and we see his attempted interfering. Again with Rushdie's novels we're unable to sympathise with any of the characters but nevertheless the strength of the writing keeps us plodding through.

The emporer's new clothes...., 18 Aug 2008
Having read and enjoyed many of the finest authors of the 19th & 20th century (including many Indian authors) I felt I had to explore Rushdie. What a mistake - pretentious, self-indulgent claptrap.

Comment on previous review, 12 Aug 2008
I would not usually indulge in a review. It is only reading the previous review that has prompted, less than a reply, than a reaction.
Midnight's Children is a good book. Does this make me a fraud? No, it just happened that I enjoyed it, savoured it's scope, it's humour, it's allegory - all of this is not difficult to grasp, only if some people did not try so hard. When a person put the word intellectual in brackets it is fairly obvious that they see a distinct 'us and you'mentality in the literary world. And as much as there are the literary squabblers and vacous acedemic blabbers, these do not rule the litrary roost.
Midnight's children is a book to be read without too much initial analysis. Lap up the world inside the book, not the underlying allegory of Indian independance. Laugh and Saleem's akwardness, do not over-exert yourself by picking apart each sentence. Ride along with this book and you will enjoy it.
I think a large part of the problem is the current image of Rusdhie. He is a celebrity, but for all the wrong reasons. Ignore Rushdie and listen to Saleem himself, it is the work and not the author your reading here.
I find it hard to believe that the previous reveiwer actually finished the book. And these literary deathmatches (Nabakov is better than Rusdhie) are pointless defences for a floundering argument.
I suggest that you ignore the last review and make your own mind up.

Clear Light of Day is an examination of contemporary India and a family history in which two sisters, Bim and Tara, learn that, although there will always be family scars, the ability to forgive and forget is a powerful ally against life's sorrows. Twenty years ago when Tara married, she left Old Delhi and a home full of sickness and death, while Bim continued to live in the family home taking care of their autistic brother, Baba. Now Tara has returned, her first visit in 10 years, for their niece's wedding. Bim refuses to attend; she can't visit their brother Raja who, like Tara, left her many years ago. Instead Bim dwells bitterly on her feelings of abandonment and the impact on her of her country's recent history: the violent conflict between Hindus and Muslims, the death of Gandhi and the ensuing struggle for political power and the malaria epidemic that killed so many. In Bim's presence, Tara once again feels "herself shrink into that small miserable wretch of 20 years ago, both admiring and resenting her tall striding sister", while "Bim was calmly unaware of any of her sister's agonies, past or present". With language that describes both the harshness and beauty of family and the land, Anita Desai takes the reader with Tara and Bim on their struggle to confront and heal old wounds. --Alex Freeman, Amazon.com

Two lifestyles to sink the spirits, 20 Sep 2008
Poor Uma. Drab, a dismal failure at school and stifled by the benign tyranny of MamaPapa in a close-knit traditional Indian family, she then begins to suffer from fits. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by her family to marry her off result each time in disgrace and instead she is groomed for a spinster life of domestic servitude. To add to her humiliation, marriage offers pour in for her younger sister and then her even younger brother wins a scholarship to study in the United States.
Lucky him, you would think to escape such a suffocating environment. But think again. During the summer recess when he is obliged to quit the halls of residence, he is ensconced with an American family in white picket-fence New England suburbia. Here we get a glimpse into how it feels to be culturally alienated, not to mention the excess that has turned Americans into a nation of suicide eaters. Well written in clear English prose and in a dry, humorous style (if you can find humour in the oppression and isolation of a young woman, or in bulimia, that is), Fasting, Feasting has a lot to say about the greedy, sanitised way we live in the West without suggesting that we have necessarily let slip any attractive alternatives in our rush to consume.


An unexpected treat, 28 Mar 2008
This is in part, a compelling portrait of a post- colonial Indian (Christian) family and the ruinous effect of India's rigid and feudalistic social conventions - exemplified perhaps by the custom of a bridegroom's family requiring a (usually) extortionate dowry from the bride's father. The first part of the novel follows the misfortunes of Uma, whose education is cut short by her parents when they decide that she must help to raise an unexpected first son, Arun. Uma's parents' attempts to arrange a marriage twice end in disaster and both times, the bridegroom's family swindle a dowry from Uma's father (Papa) but renege on their promises of marriage. In the first part of the novel, Uma's patriarchal; Anglophone father is an especially memorable character. There is for example, a wonderful scene - lasting no more than three quarters of a page - where Uma and her mother, attentive to the last detail of his needs, go through the ceremony of peeling and feeding him an orange, piece by piece. It is like a slow, wordless but vivid cinematic close-up in which the part of the father might easily be played by Om Puri - the brilliant, veteran Indian actor. Papa believes in fact that the only way forward for Indians is for them to abandon vegetarianism (one source of their weakness) become meat eaters and adopt the English tongue. The deeply conservative values and preoccupations of this middle class Indian family are so familiar that, being from Ireland, I felt I could be reading about their landed, rural Irish counterparts. There is a ruthless, financially-driven pragmatism at work, reminiscent of John McGahern's disturbing short story, Korea. I was not surprised to see this novel described as in fact, two novellas. Part two of the novel is almost a different work. It is I think, also better written. This is a novel that gets better the more you read of it and by part two, Desai has moved on to even, deeper and darker territory. Arun, only a fleeting figure and still a child in part one, is now a young adult and sent by his ambitious father to study abroad in Massachusetts. Through the outwardly impassive person of Arun, we witness the perverse American nightmare - the American dream gone wrong and nothing that Arun would have expected before he arrived. We see the stark contrast between affluent, free America and impoverished, socially rigid India. Both societies share inherent contradictions, but what they have in common is that they are both sick - albeit, the causes and symptoms of their respective malaises are different. India's woes are largely a result of its poverty while many of America's are due to a surfeit of wealth and an excess of consumption. This novel was an unexpected treat, with quite a profound message that I immediately wanted to read again. Short listed for the Booker prize in 1999.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai, 23 Feb 2008
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun's disability is visible, but Aruna's exists because of the her society's preconceptions about women.

Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. She wears thick glasses and has fits. And so in the middle class society the family inhabits, Uma can pursue only two possible roles. Either she can be married off, or she can become a labourer, a near slave for the family. The former, of course, is the same as the latter. Only the location is different. For Uma marriage doesn't happen. It does, but it fails before it starts, since the groom was already married and merely wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of both Uma's sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.

The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a faintly comic family trying to cope with their own cultural minority status within India's vastness. It takes awhile for the tragic elements of the story to surface. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, eventually display any honesty or compassion, everyone else being merely selfish, even those who kill themselves to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing but an asset to assist their trade. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl's duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her greater eligibility. So what seemed to be a pleasant family tale of the idiosyncrasies of culture becomes a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. Ugly, unmemorable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that only because she is not even a competitor. She exists on the scraps of life she is allowed.

But what of Arun, the disabled boy? Well he is quite a bright lad. He goes to university in the USA, and to an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what is he to do in the holidays when the college is closed? We can't afford to bring his all the way home, concludes parsimonious Papa.

So Arun lodges with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, an American Dream of sorts, mum, dad, two kids, one of each. But Dad is a laconic type. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none that are realistic. Mom is an emotional wreck. She years for something in her confusion, but has not idea what it might be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.

So through Arun's eyes, and to some extent as a result of his culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle class American life that is utterly dysfunctional. But it is again the women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooking to feed the unappreciative men and the daughter who cannot eat. She fantasises about Arun's cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities for which she yearns. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat wanting to be thin, eating to fast, stuffing sweets until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of female perfection. And Arun witnesses all of this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not self-obsessed.

The title is important. Fasting, Feasting presents apparent opposites, two contrasting, if imbalanced scenarios, India and the USA. It offers two deformed observers, Uma and Arun. It unpicks two contrasting cultures and finds that women are slaves in both. The opposites are thus ultimately similar, hardly opposed.


feasting then starving, 25 Jan 2008
The first part of the book is brilliant. It describes the sometimes dysfunctional aspects of the family, is engaging and enjoyable. The reader really feels for the girl. The second part feels like coming down after a hangover. First the euphoria, then the sinking feeling that things have gone wrong. I felt like giving up reading the end of the book, quite frankly. Still a good book.

moving, 06 Sep 2004
touching, moving and at times acarely realistic. The writing is controled and Desai never falls into the trap of melodrama that so many Indian authors seem unable to avoid.

Rich and beautiful but too cold for me., 22 Nov 2008
The language is as multi-layered and detailed as a Klimt, the imagery, rich and dense as Christmas cake - there's no doubt Midnight's Children is a unique and remarkable book, but I found, at it's core, it was too coldly detached. I never truly connected to Saleem or any of the characters, or the epic, grasshopper story. I was always slightly outside his world, looking in through closed blinds.

Some books - the books that live on in my mind long after - are the ones that embrace you, wrap you in a warm, soft blanket of themselves and draw you in completely and, awed though I was by the literary achievement (and it is an incredible tour de force, almost certainly deserving the over-used `genius' tag) I could never count it amongst my favourites.

It *is*a fantastical, magical, delight of a book. I did like it very much and thoroughly recommend it as a must read for almost everyone really but especially anyone who loves magical realism and vast, epic fantasy worlds. It's clearly a masterpiece - but I doubt very much if I shall want to read it again anytime soon.


Disappointing and dull, 18 Sep 2008
It's hard to live up to the "Booker of Bookers" tag but this comes nowhere near. Rushdie can write: bursts of compelling narrative display that. Unfortunately the whole story is trussed up in that clever "flash-back", "flash-forward" conceit which eventually bored me. No, I didn't finish it. I got a little further than I did with Ulysses, but eventually hurled this into the same Pseud Bin.
I've read somewhere that the author intends the time switching to be like the digressions of an oral storyteller but I think that's like trying to capture ballet in a poem or the moon in a bucket. The device is overused and tiresome. Want a Third World Magic Realism Family Saga? try "House of the Spirits".

An important, and dare I say enjoyable read, 20 Aug 2008
Whatever controversies arise from Rushdie one cannot but marvel at the depths of his imagination. Midnight's Children whilst containing some of the most beautiful language and imagery is no easy read. As with most Rushdie novels we venture into the world of magic realism and we witness the life of a child born on the stroke of midnight hour when Nehru announces the "tryst with dynasty". Born with special powers Saleem is witness through the whirlwind of events that make up India's first thirty years and we see his attempted interfering. Again with Rushdie's novels we're unable to sympathise with any of the characters but nevertheless the strength of the writing keeps us plodding through.

The emporer's new clothes...., 18 Aug 2008
Having read and enjoyed many of the finest authors of the 19th & 20th century (including many Indian authors) I felt I had to explore Rushdie. What a mistake - pretentious, self-indulgent claptrap.

Comment on previous review, 12 Aug 2008
I would not usually indulge in a review. It is only reading the previous review that has prompted, less than a reply, than a reaction.
Midnight's Children is a good book. Does this make me a fraud? No, it just happened that I enjoyed it, savoured it's scope, it's humour, it's allegory - all of this is not difficult to grasp, only if some people did not try so hard. When a person put the word intellectual in brackets it is fairly obvious that they see a distinct 'us and you'mentality in the literary world. And as much as there are the literary squabblers and vacous acedemic blabbers, these do not rule the litrary roost.
Midnight's children is a book to be read without too much initial analysis. Lap up the world inside the book, not the underlying allegory of Indian independance. Laugh and Saleem's akwardness, do not over-exert yourself by picking apart each sentence. Ride along with this book and you will enjoy it.
I think a large part of the problem is the current image of Rusdhie. He is a celebrity, but for all the wrong reasons. Ignore Rushdie and listen to Saleem himself, it is the work and not the author your reading here.
I find it hard to believe that the previous reveiwer actually finished the book. And these literary deathmatches (Nabakov is better than Rusdhie) are pointless defences for a floundering argument.
I suggest that you ignore the last review and make your own mind up.

Childhood revisited, 23 Mar 2001
Anita Desai joins three brothers after some time, and faces them to their past, individual and familiar. What results is an astonishing analysis of contemporary India and of the traps that memory places in our lives. A delicate, subtle, end extremely enjoying novel of a well-know author. If you like good literature, just read it.

Two lifestyles to sink the spirits, 20 Sep 2008
Poor Uma. Drab, a dismal failure at school and stifled by the benign tyranny of MamaPapa in a close-knit traditional Indian family, she then begins to suffer from fits. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by her family to marry her off result each time in disgrace and instead she is groomed for a spinster life of domestic servitude. To add to her humiliation, marriage offers pour in for her younger sister and then her even younger brother wins a scholarship to study in the United States.
Lucky him, you would think to escape such a suffocating environment. But think again. During the summer recess when he is obliged to quit the halls of residence, he is ensconced with an American family in white picket-fence New England suburbia. Here we get a glimpse into how it feels to be culturally alienated, not to mention the excess that has turned Americans into a nation of suicide eaters. Well written in clear English prose and in a dry, humorous style (if you can find humour in the oppression and isolation of a young woman, or in bulimia, that is), Fasting, Feasting has a lot to say about the greedy, sanitised way we live in the West without suggesting that we have necessarily let slip any attractive alternatives in our rush to consume.


An unexpected treat, 28 Mar 2008
This is in part, a compelling portrait of a post- colonial Indian (Christian) family and the ruinous effect of India's rigid and feudalistic social conventions - exemplified perhaps by the custom of a bridegroom's family requiring a (usually) extortionate dowry from the bride's father. The first part of the novel follows the misfortunes of Uma, whose education is cut short by her parents when they decide that she must help to raise an unexpected first son, Arun. Uma's parents' attempts to arrange a marriage twice end in disaster and both times, the bridegroom's family swindle a dowry from Uma's father (Papa) but renege on their promises of marriage. In the first part of the novel, Uma's patriarchal; Anglophone father is an especially memorable character. There is for example, a wonderful scene - lasting no more than three quarters of a page - where Uma and her mother, attentive to the last detail of his needs, go through the ceremony of peeling and feeding him an orange, piece by piece. It is like a slow, wordless but vivid cinematic close-up in which the part of the father might easily be played by Om Puri - the brilliant, veteran Indian actor. Papa believes in fact that the only way forward for Indians is for them to abandon vegetarianism (one source of their weakness) become meat eaters and adopt the English tongue. The deeply conservative values and preoccupations of this middle class Indian family are so familiar that, being from Ireland, I felt I could be reading about their landed, rural Irish counterparts. There is a ruthless, financially-driven pragmatism at work, reminiscent of John McGahern's disturbing short story, Korea. I was not surprised to see this novel described as in fact, two novellas. Part two of the novel is almost a different work. It is I think, also better written. This is a novel that gets better the more you read of it and by part two, Desai has moved on to even, deeper and darker territory. Arun, only a fleeting figure and still a child in part one, is now a young adult and sent by his ambitious father to study abroad in Massachusetts. Through the outwardly impassive person of Arun, we witness the perverse American nightmare - the American dream gone wrong and nothing that Arun would have expected before he arrived. We see the stark contrast between affluent, free America and impoverished, socially rigid India. Both societies share inherent contradictions, but what they have in common is that they are both sick - albeit, the causes and symptoms of their respective malaises are different. India's woes are largely a result of its poverty while many of America's are due to a surfeit of wealth and an excess of consumption. This novel was an unexpected treat, with quite a profound message that I immediately wanted to read again. Short listed for the Booker prize in 1999.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai, 23 Feb 2008
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun's disability is visible, but Aruna's exists because of the her society's preconceptions about women.

Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. She wears thick glasses and has fits. And so in the middle class society the family inhabits, Uma can pursue only two possible roles. Either she can be married off, or she can become a labourer, a near slave for the family. The former, of course, is the same as the latter. Only the location is different. For Uma marriage doesn't happen. It does, but it fails before it starts, since the groom was already married and merely wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of both Uma's sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.

The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a faintly comic family trying to cope with their own cultural minority status within India's vastness. It takes awhile for the tragic elements of the story to surface. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, eventually display any honesty or compassion, everyone else being merely selfish, even those who kill themselves to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing but an asset to assist their trade. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl's duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her greater eligibility. So what seemed to be a pleasant family tale of the idiosyncrasies of culture becomes a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. Ugly, unmemorable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that only because she is not even a competitor. She exists on the scraps of life she is allowed.

But what of Arun, the disabled boy? Well he is quite a bright lad. He goes to university in the USA, and to an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what is he to do in the holidays when the college is closed? We can't afford to bring his all the way home, concludes parsimonious Papa.

So Arun lodges with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, an American Dream of sorts, mum, dad, two kids, one of each. But Dad is a laconic type. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none that are realistic. Mom is an emotional wreck. She years for something in her confusion, but has not idea what it might be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.

So through Arun's eyes, and to some extent as a result of his culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle class American life that is utterly dysfunctional. But it is again the women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooking to feed the unappreciative men and the daughter who cannot eat. She fantasises about Arun's cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities for which she yearns. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat wanting to be thin, eating to fast, stuffing sweets until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of female perfection. And Arun witnesses all of this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not self-obsessed.

The title is important. Fasting, Feasting presents apparent opposites, two contrasting, if imbalanced scenarios, India and the USA. It offers two deformed observers, Uma and Arun. It unpicks two contrasting cultures and finds that women are slaves in both. The opposites are thus ultimately similar, hardly opposed.


feasting then starving, 25 Jan 2008
The first part of the book is brilliant. It describes the sometimes dysfunctional aspects of the family, is engaging and enjoyable. The reader really feels for the girl. The second part feels like coming down after a hangover. First the euphoria, then the sinking feeling that things have gone wrong. I felt like giving up reading the end of the book, quite frankly. Still a good book.

moving, 06 Sep 2004
touching, moving and at times acarely realistic. The writing is controled and Desai never falls into the trap of melodrama that so many Indian authors seem unable to avoid.

Rich and beautiful but too cold for me., 22 Nov 2008
The language is as multi-layered and detailed as a Klimt, the imagery, rich and dense as Christmas cake - there's no doubt Midnight's Children is a unique and remarkable book, but I found, at it's core, it was too coldly detached. I never truly connected to Saleem or any of the characters, or the epic, grasshopper story. I was always slightly outside his world, looking in through closed blinds.

Some books - the books that live on in my mind long after - are the ones that embrace you, wrap you in a warm, soft blanket of themselves and draw you in completely and, awed though I was by the literary achievement (and it is an incredible tour de force, almost certainly deserving the over-used `genius' tag) I could never count it amongst my favourites.

It *is*a fantastical, magical, delight of a book. I did like it very much and thoroughly recommend it as a must read for almost everyone really but especially anyone who loves magical realism and vast, epic fantasy worlds. It's clearly a masterpiece - but I doubt very much if I shall want to read it again anytime soon.


Disappointing and dull, 18 Sep 2008
It's hard to live up to the "Booker of Bookers" tag but this comes nowhere near. Rushdie can write: bursts of compelling narrative display that. Unfortunately the whole story is trussed up in that clever "flash-back", "flash-forward" conceit which eventually bored me. No, I didn't finish it. I got a little further than I did with Ulysses, but eventually hurled this into the same Pseud Bin.
I've read somewhere that the author intends the time switching to be like the digressions of an oral storyteller but I think that's like trying to capture ballet in a poem or the moon in a bucket. The device is overused and tiresome. Want a Third World Magic Realism Family Saga? try "House of the Spirits".

An important, and dare I say enjoyable read, 20 Aug 2008
Whatever controversies arise from Rushdie one cannot but marvel at the depths of his imagination. Midnight's Children whilst containing some of the most beautiful language and imagery is no easy read. As with most Rushdie novels we venture into the world of magic realism and we witness the life of a child born on the stroke of midnight hour when Nehru announces the "tryst with dynasty". Born with special powers Saleem is witness through the whirlwind of events that make up India's first thirty years and we see his attempted interfering. Again with Rushdie's novels we're unable to sympathise with any of the characters but nevertheless the strength of the writing keeps us plodding through.

The emporer's new clothes...., 18 Aug 2008
Having read and enjoyed many of the finest authors of the 19th & 20th century (including many Indian authors) I felt I had to explore Rushdie. What a mistake - pretentious, self-indulgent claptrap.

Comment on previous review, 12 Aug 2008
I would not usually indulge in a review. It is only reading the previous review that has prompted, less than a reply, than a reaction.
Midnight's Children is a good book. Does this make me a fraud? No, it just happened that I enjoyed it, savoured it's scope, it's humour, it's allegory - all of this is not difficult to grasp, only if some people did not try so hard. When a person put the word intellectual in brackets it is fairly obvious that they see a distinct 'us and you'mentality in the literary world. And as much as there are the literary squabblers and vacous acedemic blabbers, these do not rule the litrary roost.
Midnight's children is a book to be read without too much initial analysis. Lap up the world inside the book, not the underlying allegory of Indian independance. Laugh and Saleem's akwardness, do not over-exert yourself by picking apart each sentence. Ride along with this book and you will enjoy it.
I think a large part of the problem is the current image of Rusdhie. He is a celebrity, but for all the wrong reasons. Ignore Rushdie and listen to Saleem himself, it is the work and not the author your reading here.
I find it hard to believe that the previous reveiwer actually finished the book. And these literary deathmatches (Nabakov is better than Rusdhie) are pointless defences for a floundering argument.
I suggest that you ignore the last review and make your own mind up.

Childhood revisited, 23 Mar 2001
Anita Desai joins three brothers after some time, and faces them to their past, individual and familiar. What results is an astonishing analysis of contemporary India and of the traps that memory places in our lives. A delicate, subtle, end extremely enjoying novel of a well-know author. If you like good literature, just read it.

Synopsis from back cover, 17 Oct 2008
Hari and his sister Lila are the eldest children of an Indian family. Their mother is ill and their father spends most of his time in a drunken stupor. Grimly, Lila and Hari struggle to hold the family together until one day, in a last-ditch attempt to break out of poverty, Hari leaves his sisters in the silent, shadowy hut and runs off to Bombay. How Hari and Lila cope with the harsh realities of life in city and village, and how their inner strength and optimism carry them through, is vividly described in this warm, moving and powerful story.

simply touching, 22 Feb 2006
Anita Desai remains one of the world's most competent novelists. This book, written in the eighties on an India shrouded in socialist ideals, revolves round the lives of a family in a small coastal village in western India.
The children in the family need to grow out of being children very quickly because of a sick mother and a drunk father. Hari, the boy escapes to the legendary (and mythical as he later learns) glamour of Bombay where he goes to work in a grubby eatery (long since renovated to offer "air-conditioned" sections to enjoy a quick, delicious lunch). Hari is a little boy forced to become a young man in a short span of time and handles the transition badly at first, but stoicly reaches a peace with his circumstances.
The main and most endearing character of the book remains Hari's elder sister Lila, who, like Hari must become a woman before she has had time to be a girl. Through determination and patience she gets her mother the help she needs to be treated from sickness and she stays the quiet and strong heroine in this beautifully lucid children's book.
Anita Desai handles all her characters with a deft empathy, writing them out in ways which bring their individual desires a depth and significance. She also describes the atmosphere so well, it's like being in a painting...

downhill to uphill, 21 Dec 2004
I did not enjoy this book that much. The plot is good and the storyline is good but it doesnt quite flow together. The second half of the book is very enjoyable and i liked reading the later half. Overall an ok book.

A very moving story, 30 Jul 2004
Anita Desai's wonderful novel tells the story of a family living in the small fishing village of Thul, 14 kilometres from Bombay, India. It is more precisely the story of two young people, Hari, a boy of 14, and Lila, a girl of 13, with a will to survive. Their task is not easy. Lila has to look after their mother who is very ill with fever and requires constant care. She is also in charge of all the household chores and has to look after their two younger sisters, Bela and Kamal. Hari on the other hand has to work in the fields, selling whatever he can at the market to feed the family. Indeed, their father has long ceased to be a fisherman, his sole occupation being to get drunk on toddy every night along with his chums in the village.
Fortunately next to their hut is a large country house called Mon Repos which is owned by the de Silvas from Bombay and whenever they come on holiday to Thul, Lila and Hari can earn some extra money by helping with the household or doing work in the garden. But there is a rumour in the village saying that soon the rice fields and the coconut groves will be replaced by a large fertiliser factory. The location of Thul was chosen by the Government for its closeness to the port of Rewas. So new highways and railway lines are to be build and the villagers are worried about their future. Are they skilled enough to get a job at the factory? What will become of their traditional way of life? Will the air and the sea be polluted by chemicals? When a delegation is sent to Bombay to express their worries to the Minister Sahib, Hari decides to join the party. Before leaving, he decides that Bombay may offer him a better life opportunity than his frightened sisters, his sad house, his ill mother and his drunken father. And it is indeed in Bombay where this delicate boy, who "never did talk much and always preferred to think things out very slowly and carefully before he did", will learn to fight and become a man.
A wonderful and delicate novel, one of Anita Desai's great achievements.

could of been, but wasn't, 28 Jun 2004
This story has a good storyline and a great plot. It could of been a great book if written by someone else. disappointed.

Two lifestyles to sink the spirits, 20 Sep 2008
Poor Uma. Drab, a dismal failure at school and stifled by the benign tyranny of MamaPapa in a close-knit traditional Indian family, she then begins to suffer from fits. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by her family to marry her off result each time in disgrace and instead she is groomed for a spinster life of domestic servitude. To add to her humiliation, marriage offers pour in for her younger sister and then her even younger brother wins a scholarship to study in the United States.
Lucky him, you would think to escape such a suffocating environment. But think again. During the summer recess when he is obliged to quit the halls of residence, he is ensconced with an American family in white picket-fence New England suburbia. Here we get a glimpse into how it feels to be culturally alienated, not to mention the excess that has turned Americans into a nation of suicide eaters. Well written in clear English prose and in a dry, humorous style (if you can find humour in the oppression and isolation of a young woman, or in bulimia, that is), Fasting, Feasting has a lot to say about the greedy, sanitised way we live in the West without suggesting that we have necessarily let slip any attractive alternatives in our rush to consume.


An unexpected treat, 28 Mar 2008
This is in part, a compelling portrait of a post- colonial Indian (Christian) family and the ruinous effect of India's rigid and feudalistic social conventions - exemplified perhaps by the custom of a bridegroom's family requiring a (usually) extortionate dowry from the bride's father. The first part of the novel follows the misfortunes of Uma, whose education is cut short by her parents when they decide that she must help to raise an unexpected first son, Arun. Uma's parents' attempts to arrange a marriage twice end in disaster and both times, the bridegroom's family swindle a dowry from Uma's father (Papa) but renege on their promises of marriage. In the first part of the novel, Uma's patriarchal; Anglophone father is an especially memorable character. There is for example, a wonderful scene - lasting no more than three quarters of a page - where Uma and her mother, attentive to the last detail of his needs, go through the ceremony of peeling and feeding him an orange, piece by piece. It is like a slow, wordless but vivid cinematic close-up in which the part of the father might easily be played by Om Puri - the brilliant, veteran Indian actor. Papa believes in fact that the only way forward for Indians is for them to abandon vegetarianism (one source of their weakness) become meat eaters and adopt the English tongue. The deeply conservative values and preoccupations of this middle class Indian family are so familiar that, being from Ireland, I felt I could be reading about their landed, rural Irish counterparts. There is a ruthless, financially-driven pragmatism at work, reminiscent of John McGahern's disturbing short story, Korea. I was not surprised to see this novel described as in fact, two novellas. Part two of the novel is almost a different work. It is I think, also better written. This is a novel that gets better the more you read of it and by part two, Desai has moved on to even, deeper and darker territory. Arun, only a fleeting figure and still a child in part one, is now a young adult and sent by his ambitious father to study abroad in Massachusetts. Through the outwardly impassive person of Arun, we witness the perverse American nightmare - the American dream gone wrong and nothing that Arun would have expected before he arrived. We see the stark contrast between affluent, free America and impoverished, socially rigid India. Both societies share inherent contradictions, but what they have in common is that they are both sick - albeit, the causes and symptoms of their respective malaises are different. India's woes are largely a result of its poverty while many of America's are due to a surfeit of wealth and an excess of consumption. This novel was an unexpected treat, with quite a profound message that I immediately wanted to read again. Short listed for the Booker prize in 1999.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai, 23 Feb 2008
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun's disability is visible, but Aruna's exists because of the her society's preconceptions about women.

Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. She wears thick glasses and has fits. And so in the middle class society the family inhabits, Uma can pursue only two possible roles. Either she can be married off, or she can become a labourer, a near slave for the family. The former, of course, is the same as the latter. Only the location is different. For Uma marriage doesn't happen. It does, but it fails before it starts, since the groom was already married and merely wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of both Uma's sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.

The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a faintly comic family trying to cope with their own cultural minority status within India's vastness. It takes awhile for the tragic elements of the story to surface. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, eventually display any honesty or compassion, everyone else being merely selfish, even those who kill themselves to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing but an asset to assist their trade. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl's duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her greater eligibility. So what seemed to be a pleasant family tale of the idiosyncrasies of culture becomes a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. Ugly, unmemorable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that only because she is not even a competitor. She exists on the scraps of life she is allowed.

But what of Arun, the disabled boy? Well he is quite a bright lad. He goes to university in the USA, and to an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what is he to do in the holidays when the college is closed? We can't afford to bring his all the way home, concludes parsimonious Papa.

So Arun lodges with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, an American Dream of sorts, mum, dad, two kids, one of each. But Dad is a laconic type. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none that are realistic. Mom is an emotional wreck. She years for something in her confusion, but has not idea what it might be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.

So through Arun's eyes, and to some extent as a result of his culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle class American life that is utterly dysfunctional. But it is again the women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooking to feed the unappreciative men and the daughter who cannot eat. She fantasises about Arun's cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities for which she yearns. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat wanting to be thin, eating to fast, stuffing sweets until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of female perfection. And Arun witnesses all of this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not self-obsessed.

The title is important. Fasting, Feasting presents apparent opposites, two contrasting, if imbalanced scenarios, India and the USA. It offers two deformed observers, Uma and Arun. It unpicks two contrasting cultures and finds that women are slaves in both. The opposites are thus ultimately similar, hardly opposed.


feasting then starving, 25 Jan 2008
The first part of the book is brilliant. It describes the sometimes dysfunctional aspects of the family, is engaging and enjoyable. The reader really feels for the girl. The second part feels like coming down after a hangover. First the euphoria, then the sinking feeling that things have gone wrong. I felt like giving up reading the end of the book, quite frankly. Still a good book.

moving, 06 Sep 2004
touching, moving and at times acarely realistic. The writing is controled and Desai never falls into the trap of melodrama that so many Indian authors seem unable to avoid.

Rich and beautiful but too cold for me., 22 Nov 2008
The language is as multi-layered and detailed as a Klimt, the imagery, rich and dense as Christmas cake - there's no doubt Midnight's Children is a unique and remarkable book, but I found, at it's core, it was too coldly detached. I never truly connected to Saleem or any of the characters, or the epic, grasshopper story. I was always slightly outside his world, looking in through closed blinds.

Some books - the books that live on in my mind long after - are the ones that embrace you, wrap you in a warm, soft blanket of themselves and draw you in completely and, awed though I was by the literary achievement (and it is an incredible tour de force, almost certainly deserving the over-used `genius' tag) I could never count it amongst my favourites.

It *is*a fantastical, magical, delight of a book. I did like it very much and thoroughly recommend it as a must read for almost everyone really but especially anyone who loves magical realism and vast, epic fantasy worlds. It's clearly a masterpiece - but I doubt very much if I shall want to read it again anytime soon.


Disappointing and dull, 18 Sep 2008
It's hard to live up to the "Booker of Bookers" tag but this comes nowhere near. Rushdie can write: bursts of compelling narrative display that. Unfortunately the whole story is trussed up in that clever "flash-back", "flash-forward" conceit which eventually bored me. No, I didn't finish it. I got a little further than I did with Ulysses, but eventually hurled this into the same Pseud Bin.
I've read somewhere that the author intends the time switching to be like the digressions of an oral storyteller but I think that's like trying to capture ballet in a poem or the moon in a bucket. The device is overused and tiresome. Want a Third World Magic Realism Family Saga? try "House of the Spirits".

An important, and dare I say enjoyable read, 20 Aug 2008
Whatever controversies arise from Rushdie one cannot but marvel at the depths of his imagination. Midnight's Children whilst containing some of the most beautiful language and imagery is no easy read. As with most Rushdie novels we venture into the world of magic realism and we witness the life of a child born on the stroke of midnight hour when Nehru announces the "tryst with dynasty". Born with special powers Saleem is witness through the whirlwind of events that make up India's first thirty years and we see his attempted interfering. Again with Rushdie's novels we're unable to sympathise with any of the characters but nevertheless the strength of the writing keeps us plodding through.

The emporer's new clothes...., 18 Aug 2008
Having read and enjoyed many of the finest authors of the 19th & 20th century (including many Indian authors) I felt I had to explore Rushdie. What a mistake - pretentious, self-indulgent claptrap.

Comment on previous review, 12 Aug 2008
I would not usually indulge in a review. It is only reading the previous review that has prompted, less than a reply, than a reaction.
Midnight's Children is a good book. Does this make me a fraud? No, it just happened that I enjoyed it, savoured it's scope, it's humour, it's allegory - all of this is not difficult to grasp, only if some people did not try so hard. When a person put the word intellectual in brackets it is fairly obvious that they see a distinct 'us and you'mentality in the literary world. And as much as there are the literary squabblers and vacous acedemic blabbers, these do not rule the litrary roost.
Midnight's children is a book to be read without too much initial analysis. Lap up the world inside the book, not the underlying allegory of Indian independance. Laugh and Saleem's akwardness, do not over-exert yourself by picking apart each sentence. Ride along with this book and you will enjoy it.
I think a large part of the problem is the current image of Rusdhie. He is a celebrity, but for all the wrong reasons. Ignore Rushdie and listen to Saleem himself, it is the work and not the author your reading here.
I find it hard to believe that the previous reveiwer actually finished the book. And these literary deathmatches (Nabakov is better than Rusdhie) are pointless defences for a floundering argument.
I suggest that you ignore the last review and make your own mind up.

Childhood revisited, 23 Mar 2001
Anita Desai joins three brothers after some time, and faces them to their past, individual and familiar. What results is an astonishing analysis of contemporary India and of the traps that memory places in our lives. A delicate, subtle, end extremely enjoying novel of a well-know author. If you like good literature, just read it.

Synopsis from back cover, 17 Oct 2008
Hari and his sister Lila are the eldest children of an Indian family. Their mother is ill and their father spends most of his time in a drunken stupor. Grimly, Lila and Hari struggle to hold the family together until one day, in a last-ditch attempt to break out of poverty, Hari leaves his sisters in the silent, shadowy hut and runs off to Bombay. How Hari and Lila cope with the harsh realities of life in city and village, and how their inner strength and optimism carry them through, is vividly described in this warm, moving and powerful story.

simply touching, 22 Feb 2006
Anita Desai remains one of the world's most competent novelists. This book, written in the eighties on an India shrouded in socialist ideals, revolves round the lives of a family in a small coastal village in western India.
The children in the family need to grow out of being children very quickly because of a sick mother and a drunk father. Hari, the boy escapes to the legendary (and mythical as he later learns) glamour of Bombay where he goes to work in a grubby eatery (long since renovated to offer "air-conditioned" sections to enjoy a quick, delicious lunch). Hari is a little boy forced to become a young man in a short span of time and handles the transition badly at first, but stoicly reaches a peace with his circumstances.
The main and most endearing character of the book remains Hari's elder sister Lila, who, like Hari must become a woman before she has had time to be a girl. Through determination and patience she gets her mother the help she needs to be treated from sickness and she stays the quiet and strong heroine in this beautifully lucid children's book.
Anita Desai handles all her characters with a deft empathy, writing them out in ways which bring their individual desires a depth and significance. She also describes the atmosphere so well, it's like being in a painting...

downhill to uphill, 21 Dec 2004
I did not enjoy this book that much. The plot is good and the storyline is good but it doesnt quite flow together. The second half of the book is very enjoyable and i liked reading the later half. Overall an ok book.

A very moving story, 30 Jul 2004
Anita Desai's wonderful novel tells the story of a family living in the small fishing village of Thul, 14 kilometres from Bombay, India. It is more precisely the story of two young people, Hari, a boy of 14, and Lila, a girl of 13, with a will to survive. Their task is not easy. Lila has to look after their mother who is very ill with fever and requires constant care. She is also in charge of all the household chores and has to look after their two younger sisters, Bela and Kamal. Hari on the other hand has to work in the fields, selling whatever he can at the market to feed the family. Indeed, their father has long ceased to be a fisherman, his sole occupation being to get drunk on toddy every night along with his chums in the village.
Fortunately next to their hut is a large country house called Mon Repos which is owned by the de Silvas from Bombay and whenever they come on holiday to Thul, Lila and Hari can earn some extra money by helping with the household or doing work in the garden. But there is a rumour in the village saying that soon the rice fields and the coconut groves will be replaced by a large fertiliser factory. The location of Thul was chosen by the Government for its closeness to the port of Rewas. So new highways and railway lines are to be build and the villagers are worried about their future. Are they skilled enough to get a job at the factory? What will become of their traditional way of life? Will the air and the sea be polluted by chemicals? When a delegation is sent to Bombay to express their worries to the Minister Sahib, Hari decides to join the party. Before leaving, he decides that Bombay may offer him a better life opportunity than his frightened sisters, his sad house, his ill mother and his drunken father. And it is indeed in Bombay where this delicate boy, who "never did talk much and always preferred to think things out very slowly and carefully before he did", will learn to fight and become a man.
A wonderful and delicate novel, one of Anita Desai's great achievements.

could of been, but wasn't, 28 Jun 2004
This story has a good storyline and a great plot. It could of been a great book if written by someone else. disappointed.

Beautifully accomplished, 14 Jan 2004
Anita Desai’s short stories reflect the kaleidoscope of modern Indian life. They are set in contemporary Bombay and other cities and they evoke the colours, sounds, smells and white-hot heat of Indian cities. The stories are peopled with intensely individual characters: there is a painter living in a slum who fills his paintings with landscapes, birds and flowers he has never seen. There is an American woman who turns to the hippies in the Indian hills because she is unhappy with her life in the verdant countryside of Vermont. There is a man spiritually transformed by the surface texture of a melon. And many more. It is a finely written, atmospheric, memorable collection of short stories. As always with Anita Desai, her work is warm, perceptive, both funny and touched with sadness.

Two lifestyles to sink the spirits, 20 Sep 2008
Poor Uma. Drab, a dismal failure at school and stifled by the benign tyranny of MamaPapa in a close-knit traditional Indian family, she then begins to suffer from fits. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by her family to marry her off result each time in disgrace and instead she is groomed for a spinster life of domestic servitude. To add to her humiliation, marriage offers pour in for her younger sister and then her even younger brother wins a scholarship to study in the United States.
Lucky him, you would think to escape such a suffocating environment. But think again. During the summer recess when he is obliged to quit the halls of residence, he is ensconced with an American family in white picket-fence New England suburbia. Here we get a glimpse into how it feels to be culturally alienated, not to mention the excess that has turned Americans into a nation of suicide eaters. Well written in clear English prose and in a dry, humorous style (if you can find humour in the oppression and isolation of a young woman, or in bulimia, that is), Fasting, Feasting has a lot to say about the greedy, sanitised way we live in the West without suggesting that we have necessarily let slip any attractive alternatives in our rush to consume.


An unexpected treat, 28 Mar 2008
This is in part, a compelling portrait of a post- colonial Indian (Christian) family and the ruinous effect of India's rigid and feudalistic social conventions - exemplified perhaps by the custom of a bridegroom's family requiring a (usually) extortionate dowry from the bride's father. The first part of the novel follows the misfortunes of Uma, whose education is cut short by her parents when they decide that she must help to raise an unexpected first son, Arun. Uma's parents' attempts to arrange a marriage twice end in disaster and both times, the bridegroom's family swindle a dowry from Uma's father (Papa) but renege on their promises of marriage. In the first part of the novel, Uma's patriarchal; Anglophone father is an especially memorable character. There is for example, a wonderful scene - lasting no more than three quarters of a page - where Uma and her mother, attentive to the last detail of his needs, go through the ceremony of peeling and feeding him an orange, piece by piece. It is like a slow, wordless but vivid cinematic close-up in which the part of the father might easily be played by Om Puri - the brilliant, veteran Indian actor. Papa believes in fact that the only way forward for Indians is for them to abandon vegetarianism (one source of their weakness) become meat eaters and adopt the English tongue. The deeply conservative values and preoccupations of this middle class Indian family are so familiar that, being from Ireland, I felt I could be reading about their landed, rural Irish counterparts. There is a ruthless, financially-driven pragmatism at work, reminiscent of John McGahern's disturbing short story, Korea. I was not surprised to see this novel described as in fact, two novellas. Part two of the novel is almost a different work. It is I think, also better written. This is a novel that gets better the more you read of it and by part two, Desai has moved on to even, deeper and darker territory. Arun, only a fleeting figure and still a child in part one, is now a young adult and sent by his ambitious father to study abroad in Massachusetts. Through the outwardly impassive person of Arun, we witness the perverse American nightmare - the American dream gone wrong and nothing that Arun would have expected before he arrived. We see the stark contrast between affluent, free America and impoverished, socially rigid India. Both societies share inherent contradictions, but what they have in common is that they are both sick - albeit, the causes and symptoms of their respective malaises are different. India's woes are largely a result of its poverty while many of America's are due to a surfeit of wealth and an excess of consumption. This novel was an unexpected treat, with quite a profound message that I immediately wanted to read again. Short listed for the Booker prize in 1999.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai, 23 Feb 2008
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun's disability is visible, but Aruna's exists because of the her society's preconceptions about women.

Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. She wears thick glasses and has fits. And so in the middle class society the family inhabits, Uma can pursue only two possible roles. Either she can be married off, or she can become a labourer, a near slave for the family. The former, of course, is the same as the latter. Only the location is different. For Uma marriage doesn't happen. It does, but it fails before it starts, since the groom was already married and merely wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of both Uma's sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.

The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a faintly comic family trying to cope with their own cultural minority status within India's vastness. It takes awhile for the tragic elements of the story to surface. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, eventually display any honesty or compassion, everyone else being merely selfish, even those who kill themselves to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing but an asset to assist their trade. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl's duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her greater eligibility. So what seemed to be a pleasant family tale of the idiosyncrasies of culture becomes a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. Ugly, unmemorable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that only because she is not even a competitor. She exists on the scraps of life she is allowed.

But what of Arun, the disabled boy? Well he is quite a bright lad. He goes to university in the USA, and to an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what is he to do in the holidays when the college is closed? We can't afford to bring his all the way home, concludes parsimonious Papa.

So Arun lodges with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, an American Dream of sorts, mum, dad, two kids, one of each. But Dad is a laconic type. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none that are realistic. Mom is an emotional wreck. She years for something in her confusion, but has not idea what it might be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.

So through Arun's eyes, and to some extent as a result of his culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle class American life that is utterly dysfunctional. But it is again the women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooking to feed the unappreciative men and the daughter who cannot eat. She fantasises about Arun's cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities for which she yearns. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat wanting to be thin, eating to fast, stuffing sweets until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of female perfection. And Arun witnesses all of this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not self-obsessed.

The title is important. Fasting, Feasting presents apparent opposites, two contrasting, if imbalanced scenarios, India and the USA. It offers two deformed observers, Uma and Arun. It unpicks two contrasting cultures and finds that women are slaves in both. The opposites are thus ultimately similar, hardly opposed.


feasting then starving, 25 Jan 2008
The first part of the book is brilliant. It describes the sometimes dysfunctional aspects of the family, is engaging and enjoyable. The reader really feels for the girl. The second part feels like coming down after a hangover. First the euphoria, then the sinking feeling that things have gone wrong. I felt like giving up reading the end of the book, quite frankly. Still a good book.

moving, 06 Sep 2004
touching, moving and at times acarely realistic. The writing is controled and Desai never falls into the trap of melodrama that so many Indian authors seem unable to avoid.

Rich and beautiful but too cold for me., 22 Nov 2008
The language is as multi-layered and detailed as a Klimt, the imagery, rich and dense as Christmas cake - there's no doubt Midnight's Children is a unique and remarkable book, but I found, at it's core, it was too coldly detached. I never truly connected to Saleem or any of the characters, or the epic, grasshopper story. I was always slightly outside his world, looking in through closed blinds.

Some books - the books that live on in my mind long after - are the ones that embrace you, wrap you in a warm, soft blanket of themselves and draw you in completely and, awed though I was by the literary achievement (and it is an incredible tour de force, almost certainly deserving the over-used `genius' tag) I could never count it amongst my favourites.

It *is*a fantastical, magical, delight of a book. I did like it very much and thoroughly recommend it as a must read for almost everyone really but especially anyone who loves magical realism and vast, epic fantasy worlds. It's clearly a masterpiece - but I doubt very much if I shall want to read it again anytime soon.


Disappointing and dull, 18 Sep 2008
It's hard to live up to the "Booker of Bookers" tag but this comes nowhere near. Rushdie can write: bursts of compelling narrative display that. Unfortunately the whole story is trussed up in that clever "flash-back", "flash-forward" conceit which eventually bored me. No, I didn't finish it. I got a little further than I did with Ulysses, but eventually hurled this into the same Pseud Bin.
I've read somewhere that the author intends the time switching to be like the digressions of an oral storyteller but I think that's like trying to capture ballet in a poem or the moon in a bucket. The device is overused and tiresome. Want a Third World Magic Realism Family Saga? try "House of the Spirits".

An important, and dare I say enjoyable read, 20 Aug 2008
Whatever controversies arise from Rushdie one cannot but marvel at the depths of his imagination. Midnight's Children whilst containing some of the most beautiful language and imagery is no easy read. As with most Rushdie novels we venture into the world of magic realism and we witness the life of a child born on the stroke of midnight hour when Nehru announces the "tryst with dynasty". Born with special powers Saleem is witness through the whirlwind of events that make up India's first thirty years and we see his attempted interfering. Again with Rushdie's novels we're unable to sympathise with any of the characters but nevertheless the strength of the writing keeps us plodding through.

The emporer's new clothes...., 18 Aug 2008
Having read and enjoyed many of the finest authors of the 19th & 20th century (including many Indian authors) I felt I had to explore Rushdie. What a mistake - pretentious, self-indulgent claptrap.

Comment on previous review, 12 Aug 2008
I would not usually indulge in a review. It is only reading the previous review that has prompted, less than a reply, than a reaction.
Midnight's Children is a good book. Does this make me a fraud? No, it just happened that I enjoyed it, savoured it's scope, it's humour, it's allegory - all of this is not difficult to grasp, only if some people did not try so hard. When a person put the word intellectual in brackets it is fairly obvious that they see a distinct 'us and you'mentality in the literary world. And as much as there are the literary squabblers and vacous acedemic blabbers, these do not rule the litrary roost.
Midnight's children is a book to be read without too much initial analysis. Lap up the world inside the book, not the underlying allegory of Indian independance. Laugh and Saleem's akwardness, do not over-exert yourself by picking apart each sentence. Ride along with this book and you will enjoy it.
I think a large part of the problem is the current image of Rusdhie. He is a celebrity, but for all the wrong reasons. Ignore Rushdie and listen to Saleem himself, it is the work and not the author your reading here.
I find it hard to believe that the previous reveiwer actually finished the book. And these literary deathmatches (Nabakov is better than Rusdhie) are pointless defences for a floundering argument.
I suggest that you ignore the last review and make your own mind up.

Childhood revisited, 23 Mar 2001
Anita Desai joins three brothers after some time, and faces them to their past, individual and familiar. What results is an astonishing analysis of contemporary India and of the traps that memory places in our lives. A delicate, subtle, end extremely enjoying novel of a well-know author. If you like good literature, just read it.

Synopsis from back cover, 17 Oct 2008
Hari and his sister Lila are the eldest children of an Indian family. Their mother is ill and their father spends most of his time in a drunken stupor. Grimly, Lila and Hari struggle to hold the family together until one day, in a last-ditch attempt to break out of poverty, Hari leaves his sisters in the silent, shadowy hut and runs off to Bombay. How Hari and Lila cope with the harsh realities of life in city and village, and how their inner strength and optimism carry them through, is vividly described in this warm, moving and powerful story.

simply touching, 22 Feb 2006
Anita Desai remains one of the world's most competent novelists. This book, written in the eighties on an India shrouded in socialist ideals, revolves round the lives of a family in a small coastal village in western India.
The children in the family need to grow out of being children very quickly because of a sick mother and a drunk father. Hari, the boy escapes to the legendary (and mythical as he later learns) glamour of Bombay where he goes to work in a grubby eatery (long since renovated to offer "air-conditioned" sections to enjoy a quick, delicious lunch). Hari is a little boy forced to become a young man in a short span of time and handles the transition badly at first, but stoicly reaches a peace with his circumstances.
The main and most endearing character of the book remains Hari's elder sister Lila, who, like Hari must become a woman before she has had time to be a girl. Through determination and patience she gets her mother the help she needs to be treated from sickness and she stays the quiet and strong heroine in this beautifully lucid children's book.
Anita Desai handles all her characters with a deft empathy, writing them out in ways which bring their individual desires a depth and significance. She also describes the atmosphere so well, it's like being in a painting...

downhill to uphill, 21 Dec 2004
I did not enjoy this book that much. The plot is good and the storyline is good but it doesnt quite flow together. The second half of the book is very enjoyable and i liked reading the later half. Overall an ok book.

A very moving story, 30 Jul 2004
Anita Desai's wonderful novel tells the story of a family living in the small fishing village of Thul, 14 kilometres from Bombay, India. It is more precisely the story of two young people, Hari, a boy of 14, and Lila, a girl of 13, with a will to survive. Their task is not easy. Lila has to look after their mother who is very ill with fever and requires constant care. She is also in charge of all the household chores and has to look after their two younger sisters, Bela and Kamal. Hari on the other hand has to work in the fields, selling whatever he can at the market to feed the family. Indeed, their father has long ceased to be a fisherman, his sole occupation being to get drunk on toddy every night along with his chums in the village.
Fortunately next to their hut is a large country house called Mon Repos which is owned by the de Silvas from Bombay and whenever they come on holiday to Thul, Lila and Hari can earn some extra money by helping with the household or doing work in the garden. But there is a rumour in the village saying that soon the rice fields and the coconut groves will be replaced by a large fertiliser factory. The location of Thul was chosen by the Government for its closeness to the port of Rewas. So new highways and railway lines are to be build and the villagers are worried about their future. Are they skilled enough to get a job at the factory? What will become of their traditional way of life? Will the air and the sea be polluted by chemicals? When a delegation is sent to Bombay to express their worries to the Minister Sahib, Hari decides to join the party. Before leaving, he decides that Bombay may offer him a better life opportunity than his frightened sisters, his sad house, his ill mother and his drunken father. And it is indeed in Bombay where this delicate boy, who "never did talk much and always preferred to think things out very slowly and carefully before he did", will learn to fight and become a man.
A wonderful and delicate novel, one of Anita Desai's great achievements.

could of been, but wasn't, 28 Jun 2004
This story has a good storyline and a great plot. It could of been a great book if written by someone else. disappointed.

Beautifully accomplished, 14 Jan 2004
Anita Desai’s short stories reflect the kaleidoscope of modern Indian life. They are set in contemporary Bombay and other cities and they evoke the colours, sounds, smells and white-hot heat of Indian cities. The stories are peopled with intensely individual characters: there is a painter living in a slum who fills his paintings with landscapes, birds and flowers he has never seen. There is an American woman who turns to the hippies in the Indian hills because she is unhappy with her life in the verdant countryside of Vermont. There is a man spiritually transformed by the surface texture of a melon. And many more. It is a finely written, atmospheric, memorable collection of short stories. As always with Anita Desai, her work is warm, perceptive, both funny and touched with sadness.

Lets the 5 senses enter Bombay, and maybe hear India's soul, 15 Apr 2005
. . .
I was struggling with the flu this week - an ideal time to finish reading a novel, and what a read it turned out to be :-)

I had to persevere for the first half - I like books to cheer me up and Baumgartner's Bombay is not exactly a cheery little tale. It p