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Abandoned, but not lightly...

Shortlisted for the 1996 Booker prize, and recommended by just about everyone who's read it, I came to this book with high expectations. I began the book on the 29th July and finally abandoned it on 1st September at just over the half-way mark. So this review is an attempt to explain why I struggled so badly with a book that apparently the whole world loves.

The book is set in the period of the late '70s/early '80s, probably in Bombay, I think, though I don't think Mistry ever actually says so. Mrs Gandhi is in power and ‘The Emergency� has been declared � a period, it would seem, when the government was cracking down on opposition and civil liberties in general. I say 'it would seem' because again Mistry doesn't really bother to tell us about the political situation � he implies his characters are too poor or disinterested to care about politics and, since we see only through their eyes, we get only a vague, fuzzy view of what's going on. Fine, if you already have an in-depth knowledge of Indian politics of four decades ago, but unfortunately I don't.

The book starts with the coming together of four people whose stories make up the heart of the book. Dina Dalal, a widow on the edge of poverty, takes on a contract to make clothing for one of the big new companies that have taken work away from the traditional tailors. To fulfil the work, she hires two such dispossessed tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Omprakash. At the same time she takes in student Maneck, the son of an old school friend, as a paying lodger. The first half of the book is taken up with the backstories of these characters, explaining what tragedies have led them to this point. And when I say tragedies, boy, do I mean tragedies. Rape, murder, all forms of cruelty, racial and religious attacks, threatened incest � all human misery is here, often several times over. But these poor people don't realise this has actually been the good part of their lives � things are going to get worse...

But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

Mistry's writing style is very good. The descriptions of these awful lives in this horrible country are detailed and convincing. So convincing, in fact, that one is left wondering why anyone would choose to go on living at all. Each day is a joyless burden, filled with nastiness and filth. There are only two groups of people in this country: the oppressors and the oppressed. No hope, no chance for escape from the degradations and privations that increase with every passing day. Not a picture of India that I recognise from other novels, the best of which do show the extreme poverty and huge inequalities, but also show the diversity and even vibrancy of the country as a whole.

The characterisation is strong in the sense that each of the four main protagonists is well delineated and their behaviour is consistent with their past experiences. But the problem is that Mistry clearly has a political agenda and the characters are no more than puppets. I felt that Mistry had started with a list of all the bad things about life under Mrs Gandhi, added all the different ways people can be nasty to each other, and then dumped all this misery on the heads of this tiny group of characters. I'm sure all these bad things happened, indeed still do, but I'm equally sure they don't happen every single day to the same people. If there's a riot, they'll be caught up in it. If a slum is pulled down, it'll be their slum. If a father is murdered for being the wrong caste, it'll be their father. If a wife is raped for being poor...well, you get my point. Even if one of them pauses to make friends with a dog, you can be sure the dog will die hideously within a chapter. The strange result of this was that I didn't care what happened to any of them, because I didn't believe in them as people � merely as fairground ducks for Mistry to shoot over and over again.

I've had a long, long time to think about why I found it so difficult to pick the book up and read even a few pages each day, and the conclusion I've come to is that the book lacks two fundamental necessaries. Firstly, there is no plot. There is simply a description of the miserable lives of these miserable people � we're not heading towards, or even away from, anything. And secondly, there is no glimmer of hope. I'm not suggesting there should be a happy ending with them all becoming rich and happy, but there has to be a possibility of something in the future that would make their present lives worth the horrible daily struggle. But there isn't � it's crystal clear that things are going to get worse and worse until Mistry finally runs out of things to torment them with; at which point they will be abandoned to their miserable fates. (When I decided to give up, I flicked ahead to the end to see if I was being unfair � I wasn't.) I'm a political animal, so I love novels that include an element of politics in them. But there must be something else in them too � otherwise it's not a novel. This book is about one important sector of society, the poor, at a particular point of Indian history; but I got no overall picture of the society, no understanding of why the political situation had reached this stage, no glimmer of what opposition might be in train. As an extremely lengthy description of how awful life can be for people caught up in hopeless poverty and cruelty, full marks. But then we already know that, don't we? We watch the news...don't we? A novel needs to be more than that, surely? It needs to tell us what we don't already know � it needs to make us think…to care. And ultimately this one doesn't...

‘Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. ‘Yes� he repeated. ‘In the end, it's all a question of balance.�

For me, Mistry failed to achieve a balance � the book is too heavily weighted towards misery and despair. The quality of the characterisation and descriptive writing makes me feel that my 1-star rating is harsh, but since I can’t bring myself to finish the book, I feel it’s the only rating I can give it.