In this dark look at India circa 1975 four people from different worlds are thrown together to live in one apartment together.
review:
This is a really well written and terribly depressing novel. The writing is beautiful and sweeps you up and doesn't let you go until it is done (and then it leaves you rather hollow feeling). The four characters are so well crafted that you feel as though you personally know each one, and years after finishing the novel will still thing about them on occasion. Be warned you will cry. Mistry uses this setting and these characters to show the world an India (a terrible unjust world) that has been ignored for far to long, a history that is worth knowing no matter where in the world you are from. A good read for everyone.
8/10
"...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance."
"Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off."
"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."
"After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life."
"...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying."
"You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance."
if you enjoyed this you should read:
Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
Mercy Among The Children - David Adams Richards
The Englishman's Boy - Guy Vanderhaeghe
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