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The Inheritance of Loss: A Novel (Man Booker Prize) By Kiran Desai ( Atlantic Monthly Press )
Release Date: 2005-11-28
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Product Description
Kiran Desai's first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published to unanimous acclaim in over twenty-two countries. Now Desai takes us to the northeastern Himalayas where a rising insurgency challenges the old way of life. In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives on his doorstep. The judge's chatty cook watches over her, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, hopscotching from one New York restaurant job to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS, forced to consider his country's place in the world. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai's new-sprung romance with her handsome Nepali tutor and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they, too, are forced to confront their colliding interests. The nation fights itself. The cook witnesses the hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge must revisit his past, his own role in this grasping world of conflicting desires-every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal. A novel of depth and emotion, Desai's second, long-awaited novel fulfills the grand promise established by her first.
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Ultimately disappointing
The Inheritance Of Loss by Kiran Desai is a magnificent, impressive novel that ultimately is disappointing. As a process, the book is almost stunningly good. As a product, it falls short.
The book's language, scenarios and juxtapositions are funny, threatening, vivid and tender all at the same time. The comic element, always riven through with irony, is most often to the fore, as characters grapple with a world much bigger than themselves, a world that only ever seems to admit them partially, and rarely on their own terms. The one criticism I have of the style is Kiran Desai's propensity to offer up lists as comic devices, a technique that works a couple of times, but later has the reader scanning forward to the next substance.
An aged judge lives in the highlands of north India. As political and ethnic tensions stretch through the mountain air, he reconsiders his origins, his education, his career, his opportunities, both taken and missed. He has a granddaughter, orphaned in most unlikely circumstances, as her parents trained for a Russian space programme. But what circumstances that create orphans are ever likely? She is growing up, accompanied by most of what that entails.
The cook in the rickety mansion is the person that really runs the household, his rule-of-thumb methods predating the appliances he has to use and the services he has to provide. He manages, imaginatively. He has a son, Biju, who eventually forms the centrepiece of the book's complex, somewhat rambling story. Biju has emigrated to New York, where he has made it big, at least as far as the folks back home think. On site, he slaves away in the dungeon kitchens of fast food outlets, restaurants, both up and downmarket, and a few plain eateries. Kiran Desai provides the reader with a superb image of globalisation when she describes the customer-receiving areas of an upmarket restaurant flying an advertised, authentic French flag, while in the kitchen the flags are Indian, Honduran, anything but French. Now there is true authenticity for you, offered up in its manufactured, globalised form.
Biju, of course, dreams of home, but the comparatively large number of US dollars he earns - at least as far as the folks back home see it - barely covers essentials in someone else's reality.
The narrative of The Inheritance Of Loss flits between New York, northern India and elsewhere, and also between the here and now, yesteryear and the judge's childhood. And perhaps it flits too much, because the scenes are often cut short before the reader feels they have made a point.
And ultimately this reader found that the book lacked focus. While the process was enjoyable, the product was not worth the journey. The Inheritance Of Loss seemed to promise to take us somewhere in this globalised confusion of identity, motive, routine, unrealised dreams and intangible desires, but eventually it seemed to have nothing to add to a sense of "well that's how it is", which is precisely where we started. There was an opportunity for more, but it was ducked.
The book was thus a thoroughly enjoyable read that threatened to achieve greatness through statement, but unfortunately missed the mark, and by a long way.
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 If you buy and read this, it's your "inheritance of loss" !
Unable to believe this won a Booker prize! What's with the committee? What kind of a message is it driving to readers by endorsing such a pathetic book by endowing it a prestigious award? By the time you finish you will be/have:
(1) "Drained and depressed", by the grim and dismal world created by Desai
(2) "Confused and irritated", with the heavy linguistic pretense
(3) "Mentally flagellated", by the unbearable constant negativity of the characters
(4) Lost either your "money" or "time" or both.
(5) Regretting your "inheritance of loss"!
What more can I say, the title says it all and justifies it all.
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Fiction in serious need of an editor
Inheritance of Loss was one of our book club selections, and unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the meeting where it was discussed. No matter. I didn't finish the book because it was simply too frustrating and painful to continue reading. The structure -- short, choppy sections on each page -- was to me like watching a dance video that never stops long enough on the dancers to appreciate what they're doing. What's worse, nothing happened that made me want to continue to the next sections and it was a downer the entire time I was reading it. I see from other reviews that some felt the downer mood continues right to the end. I read a lot and am willing to stick with a book if it doesn't grab my attention right from the start, but I'm afraid this one didn't have any redeeming qualities for me. Time is too precious to waste on books that I don't enjoy.
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Well conceived, poorly executed ( marel_brady )
Well conceived, poorly executed. The writing style feels like a first draft. The historical significance is portrayed in shambolic fashion. Our book club gave a poor rating, with many declining to finish the reading the novel.
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 Powerful, realistic
A powerful novel, which kept me up reading every night. At once so many dimensions-a political novel, tackling issues of class, prejudice and race; one of the few works portraying the realities of the illegal immigrant underclass in America-and the hopes and dreams that started it all; the self sabotage that destroys families.
We read all the time about the success stories of immigrants to the US, but most people are unaware of the immigrants who are hopelessly trapped in poverty and who are worse off than where they left. The portrayal of the visa issue system is stunningly accurate, having observed this first hand for myself, in several countries. Not for those who view the world with rose tinted glasses, or don't want to accept the realities of the lives of many.
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Addiction
