There were multiple copies of this Man Booker Prize (2006) winning book on our library shelves so it seemed like a good idea to read it. Strangely, it seemed to drag on and on and I was glad to finish it although 'glad' is not the emotion this depressing novel left me with. I wondered if the intriguing title would have an explicit reference but ultimately it summarised an utterly miserable story. For the characters it depicts, and for all their striving for something better, loss and failure become inherently predictable. Perhaps they are the substance of India itself.

The books had titles long faded into the buckled covers; some of them had not been touched in fifty years and they broke apart in one's hands, shedding glue like chitinous bits of insect. Their pages were stencilled with the shapes of long disintegrated fern collections and bored by termites into what looked like maps of plumbing. The yellowed paper imparted a faint acidic tingle and fell easily into mosaic pieces, barely perceptible between the fingers - moth wings at the brink of eternity and dust. (p.198)

Kiran Desai is a fine and insightful writer. Much of what was so destructive about British Colonial rule applies equally to Australia - not least the residual persistence of aesthetics. I would have given this book 5 stars had it elicited some prospect of joy.
The book needed a glossary. I felt excluded from so many words and terms that I could not comprehend.
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Just couldn’t get through this and finally stopped pushing myself. ( )

I just couldn't get through this. Nothing compelled me to keep going! Even when the romance started between Sai and Gyan, which was maybe the most interesting part, I still couldn't make myself get interested. The judge's horribly lonely experience as an Indian college student in London was interesting, but it seemed like a short story disconnected from the rest of the novel. I guess it was similar in some ways to Biju's experience as an undocumented restaurant worker in NYC. Sigh. I think I made it about 60% of the way through, but life's too short to carry on with a book that doesn't grab you at all. I'm disappointed that I spent so much of my grown-up book time on this. Back to kid lit! ( )

I feel like this deserves a better review than I will give it, I struggled through to 300 pages but it was just too dense for me and I couldn’t get into it. ( )

Well, I never wrote any comment about this book and don't have a good memory of reading it. Best guess: it was quickly read on vacation (check timeline with other reads) ( )

A bit bloated and meandering. Also a little dour and scatalogical. And not quite what I wanted after her first book, but I can't hold that against it. ( )

I started reading this book more than once. I finally decided that it had wonderful reviews so it must be good. My conclusion is that yes, it is good, but has a hard message.

Many books reveal the triumph of the human spirit in difficult situations. I don't think that anyone in this book ends up happy. Nepal/Gujariti is certainly portrayed as an unhappy place. This is not the only location where feuding/rebelling groups end up creating more unhappiness than they promote. The language is lovely and the descriptions are splendid. don't read it if you want a happy ending. ( )

I quite liked this but it wasn't a stand out Booker winner for me. It had a great sense of place with some sections set in the Himalayas and others set in New York kitchens or Cambridge. It spans a few generations and there is a lot of nice detail and scene setting. I'm not sure it fully works as a narrative, but it was an enjoyable read. ( )

Nepal, India, Fundamentalism, Himalayas, war, Booker ( )

Very moving and beautifully written. A lot of humor, but as you might guess from the title achingly sad. ( )

Judge Patel, his granddaughter, Sai, and a cook live in a formerly grand, now dilapidated, house in the shadow of the Himalayas, near the border of India with Nepal. Their personal stories are set against a backdrop of political unrest in the Kalimpong region in northeastern India. The cook’s son, Biju, has emigrated to the United States and has stayed without a green card. He obtains one menial job after the next, is treated poorly, and ultimately decides to make a significant change.

This is an ambitious book that tries to blend many themes and stories together. We have Sai’s love/hate relationship with her tutor, a robbery that ties into the political situation, and the backstories of almost every character, including several ancillary characters. I was engaged at the beginning of the book but, with all the competing storylines, it bogged down a bit in the middle.

The writing is strong. It does not contain an overarching narrative arc that sustains the whole. It is more of a patchwork quilt including themes such as colonialism, sect-related prejudices in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, the tribulations of illegal immigrants in the US, and class-related injustices. I can say I enjoyed reading it for the cultural aspects and the descriptions of the landscape and life in this remote region, but I prefer a storyline that is a little more tightly focused. ( )

A brilliant book, possibly the best I have read this year.
Interwoven stories written in stunning, lyrical prose.
Gritty and tender at the same time. A real gem. ( )

Reason read: Asian Author Challenge (India), 1001, ROOT, Booker (2006)
This novel has been on my shelf since 2013. I found it slow to get into so never really got it started but I've read it now. It has two points of view (life in the US as an illegal) and life in India (anglicized). It's a story that informs of the internal conflicts within India post colonization. It's the impact of the past and present on the present and future generations. It features the Gorkhaland Movement.The term Gorkhaland was coined by Subhash Ghisingh, leader of Gorkha National Liberation Front, who led a violent agitation for its formation in the 1980s.This movement culminated with the formation of Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) in 1988. Topics addressed in the book include; globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequalities, fundamental and terrorist violence. ( )

DNF. All icing no cake. Frequently lovely writing, very high craftsmanship, but lacking any momentum at all. Most of the novel plays out like a lazy memory, which needed a bit more energy to get going - and all the well-observed details in the world can't save a non-existent plot. ( )

A complicated exploration of colonialism from the view of Indians living near the Nepal border, and their relatives in England and the United States. It traces how political turmoil affects the interconnected web of people. It is a bleak book, but well worth the read. ( )

Beautifully written but otherwise very flavorless story. There is actually two stories set in present, one of an Indian orphan Sai who falls in love with her math tutor and another one of Biju who emigrates to the USA, and one set in history (the story of the judge). Around the stories is the 1980s Gurkha revolution, but not knowing Indian history, it is not easy to grasp from the book what is going on, what is their motivation and historical/cultural/sociological situation. None of the characters were truly interesting as their stories consisted of only scattered events and it was difficult to relate to their struggles and dreams. The story of Biju's failed emigration to the States had some potential and succeeded in giving perspective to emigrants life. However, it also was very flat and Biju was left as a distant and naive character (well, aren't we all naive to some extent...) ( )

the writing here is too exceptional for me to rate this any lower, but as a novel unfortunately i found this lacking. i wanted more out of each of the characters and each of their stories. i didn't like any of the characters, but that's ok. i wanted more depth from all of them, though. we got little peeks into their backstories and into who they are, but it just wasn't enough to hold the book together for me. there's so much going on - immigration, racism, colonialism, wealth gaps - and none of it is given enough exploration.

but oh my goodness the writing is exquisite.

"...it was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed."

"...she had not estimated the imbalance between the finality of good-bye and the briefness of the last moment." ( )

I'm reading all the winners of the Booker Prize since its inception. This was #41 of 53. Follow me at www.methodtohermadness.com.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai is a beautifully written novel about people of India: those who are born there, those who live there, those who leave and those who want to leave. One of the central characters, Sai, has been raised in India, but in a Western convent. When she goes to live with her grandfather, who was trained in England, then returned to India as a judge, he finds they have much in common – just not their nationality. Another main character, Biju, has left India to pursue the American dream, which turns out to be sleeping on a table in the cheap restaurant where he works and getting no medical treatment for an on-the-job injury. Others are immigrants who are kicked out when the locals try to create an independent state. It seems the population is in a frustrated flux, with people who want to go unable to leave, and those who want to stay being evicted.

I found this novel too sprawling and slow, like Midnight’s Children, which I also didn’t enjoy very much. And yet, despite the long unfurling of the plot, I still did not feel that I got to know the peripheral characters well – I could still barely tell them apart by the end. The “Indian” novels I’ve enjoyed most so far in this project have been by Englishmen: The Siege of Krishnapur and Staying On. I also loved The God of Small Things, which has a tighter, more Western-style plot-with-a-twist, and was a bestseller here in the U.S. So maybe my novel sensibilities are just very Western. I am still glad that this project is pushing me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to read novels I wouldn’t otherwise. ( )

I listened to this audio book because I work with so many Indians in my line of work that I had wanted to read more Indian literature to get a greater cultural understanding of my fellow workers. From that perspective the biggest thing I gained here was learning that at least part of the reason that the Indian caste system continues to this day is a feeling that the caste one is born into is part of their just rewards for actions in a previous life. So if you are born to a lower caste it may because you were a real asshole in your previous life, so it is correct to treat them lower.

I give this book only 2.5 stars primarily because from an audio perspective it was very difficult to follow. The story is told from at least 4 different 1st person perspectives (which isn't normally a problem lots of my Star Trek books do that) but on the audiobook it isn't always clear when the transitions occur, especially as it doesn't always change just at the Chapter break. I suspect that it is easier to follow in the dead tree form, like a double line break or something.

This is basically the life story of an orphan we know mostly as "the judge" his rise from poverty to study to become a member of the ICS when Britain was Indianizing their regime. His daughter, her math tutuor, their cook, and the cook's son. Immigration back and forth to India, the judge to England for education, the cook's son to the US to try to make ends meet. The math tutor and the daughter fall in love, only for the tutor to turn on her because of political upheaval and his acceptance of a new nationalism. It bounces back and forth from India to the EU to the US. It bounces around time lines until it finally all falls into place. If that sounds interesting to you I recommend reading it rather than listening to it. ( )

A remarkable book. A bitter old judge, his granddaughter, her tutor, the judge's cook, and his cook's son all feature here. The judge lives in the Himalayas in a house that is declining. Once rich, he is now struggling to keep the house, against forces that are looking for change, especially change that does not bode well for the old guard.

Through intertwining stories, we follow the judge's life story, his granddaughter Sai's flight and her response to her tutor, the cook's troubles, and the cook's son Biju. Biju struggles in the United States, trying to make it against difficult odds.

And through it all a kind of love story.

Complex lives, affected by the political changes arising from colonialism. Absorbing. ( )

Excellent writing throughout, and a great assessment of cultural movement from one territory to another as a traveller and an immigrant. Some slower sections, but the content is worth it and the conclusion is darkly excellent. ( )

This book was a little more stream-of-conscious-y and postmodern-y than I usually expect from a Booker winner, but not extremely so---it isn't tough to read at all (I'm looking at you, Finnegans Wake). The plot interweaves the stories of the Judge (a bitter and hateful old man, crushed by long years of what I think is an acute anxiety disorder); his orphaned granddaughter, Sai; his nameless cook; and the cook's son, Biju. The plot is set against the backdrop of Nepalese insurgency in Kalimpong, India.

A beautiful exploration of what it means to be foreign both in one's own homeland and abroad; what it means to be wealthy versus destitute; what it is to be capable of love, or not. Desai's use of place as a metaphor is precise and inspiring, particularly in the description of Cho Oyu (the manor house), a symbol of privelge that is literally crumbling around its inhabitants.
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"The present changes the past. looking back you do not find what you left behind."

Written in 2006 this book centres on two main characters, one an orphan living in the mountains of India one illegally in the US and looks at the conflict between the traditional Indian way of life and the apparent opulence of the West, in particular Britain and the US.

The story opens with Sai, a well-educated Indian girl living with her grandfather in the mountains of India bordering Nepal and Bhutan being beset by a group of intruders. Her grandfather is a retired judge, trying to live out his life in virtual isolation and decaying grandeur but one night they are robbed of food, guns and liquor by Nepalese separatists and this isolation is threatened. It is a turbulent time for them and the region.

Sai’s grandfather left and eventually killed his wife so when Sai is orphaned he takes on the responsibility of her upbringing and education, hiring a tutor, Gyan, to teach her mathematics and science when Sai's original tutor reaches the end of her own knowledge. The grandfather wants to leave behind the traditions of India, but feels guilty about his treatment of his wife whilst Sai falls in love with her tutor despite the difference in their social classes.

Meanwhile, the only servant in the house, the cook, worries about his son, Biju. Encouraged to do so by his father, Biju overstayed his tourist visa and lives illegally in the US working in kitchens for slave wages and generally being taken advantage of, often by immigrants to the country like himself.

As the political situation deteriorates and the separatists become ever more brazen each character must confront how they have lived their lives thus far.

Much of the novel deals with the effects of colonialism in the wake of Britain's withdrawal from the sub-continent when many Indians were fascinated by the English way of life, which seemed to offer more opportunities to escape from the squalor in their own country. However, Britain's withdrawal has also caused problems. When Western powers decided where the borders should be many ethnic minorities found themselves outsiders in their own country. India’s own class system is in itself also a stumbling block to progress.

The grandfather and granddaughter are upper class Indians. They are educated and in the case of the former judge spent time living in the West. This experience causes the grandfather to resent his Indian background, going as far as wearing white powder to try to hide his Indian colour. He returns home to his wife, but she reminds him of what he left behind in Britain, and spends the rest of her life in contempt of her.

Despite stories of riches, in America Biju lives in the same squalor that he hoped to leave behind him back in India, finding it a struggle find both food and shelter. He feels that his hopes have been betrayed and finally decides to give up his dream to return home to his father.

This then leads on to another major theme, isolation. Despite working for him for many years the judge treats the cook much the same as Biju is treated by his employers in America. The judge despises his Indian traditions and is more Western than Indian but despite never being accepted into English society, his neighbours treat him as a part of this Western culture, further isolating him as he fits into neither. Biju, in contrast hoped to escape class stigma by going to America but discovers the same prejudices. Sai and Gyan love one another, and try to bridge the gap but find themselves separated by insurmountable differences in social status.

The book then looks at post-colonial expectations of differing generations and classes as they search for identity after independence. It is by no means all gloom and doom. There are a number of set piece comic episodes involving minor characters. So why didn't I enjoy it more? I'm not really sure. I usually enjoy post-colonial novels. I think that it may have something to do with the sheer scope of this novel. I found that I couldn't really connect with any of the characters and for that reason somehow it just didn't gel with me. An OK but not a great read.

" The journey once begun, has no end." ( )

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Set in the late 1980;s this story revolves around Sai, who goes to live with her Grandfather (A Judge) after losing both her parents. The second revolves around Biju, the son of Sai's (Grandfather's) Cook. Sai lives in India with a strict and often distracted grandfather. While Biju lives is the United States trying to make a living as a cook, and an undocumented immigrant.

The story moves at a slow pace with attention to detail, and rich dialog. The characters are well developed and I got to know each one well. Both Sai and Biju are very likable and each is gong through their own personal discoveries. They face many challenges and want to achieve the best they can out of life. Overall I found The Inheritance of Loss enjoyable and feel others will enjoy it as well. ( )

Cruel, oh so cruel. This privileged daughter of a famous author, well educated and rich creates some down trodden loser characters in a fading town and then trods on them even further. It made for depressing reading and I did not see the point. I admit, I could not get past the image of this rich, young, beautiful and successful woman creating these characters and laughing at their misery all through the book (yes, she is laughing, read the book if you do not believe me). And, she got a Booker for it, right! ( )