Vikram Seth's Passage to India

  

I first went to India in the summer of 1994, or rather it seems that way to me today.  Actually I first set foot on that great subcontinent a decade later when I visited Kerala state, doing research for my book Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places (Véhicule Press, 2007) but in 1994 I spent much of the summer reading Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy.  At nearly 1500 pages it was literally heavy reading even in paperback, but it also transported me to the India of the 1950s so engagingly that I didn't mind the length.

 

The story is simple: a young woman and her mother are on the lookout for a suitable young man for her to marry.  She falls in love with someone who is not acceptable because of his religion (shades of Romeo and Juliet) and she ultimately marries someone who at first glance seems totally unimpressive, but who turns out to have wonderful qualities (shades of Beauty and the Beast.)

 

But far from being a bloated, formulaic Romance, the novel is a detailed, often funny, acutely observed portrait of India at a time of national affirmation.  I couldn't help thinking of it often as I read Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia (book review July 11. )  While Desai writes brilliantly, and tells a multi-faceted story,  the novel stumbles when it enters the realm of magic realism.  Seth is consistently realistic, and the arc of his story is much clearer, on the other hand.  His book is as rewarding a read as a real trip to India can be for those who don't know that corner of the world.

 

After decades of delay, Seth is promising to publish a sequel,  A Suitable Girl in Fall 2026.  In it, the young girl of the first novel is now in her 80s and is trying to find a good match for her grandson.  I'm looking forward to reading it, but perhaps I shouldn't hold my breath since Seth has previously set at least two other publication dates which passed without the book appearing.   

Sonia and Sunny: Pretty Good but Not Stupendous

 

      A friend who is a discerning reader raved to me about Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. "What she does is amazing," she said.  "It's one of the best books I've read in years."

 

Given that kind of praise, you can be sure I quickly went looking for it. Took me a while to get it: I always turn to libraries first, and even though the libraries I belong to have 30 copies among them, I had to wait three and a half months before my turn to read the book came up.

 

Obviously, reviews, word of mouth, and the fact that the book made many "best of 2025" lists has led to lots of people seek it out. However, I think the nearly 700-page novel, while good, is not as stupendous as all that.

 

It tell the stories of two young Indian people from good families from Delhi who have been sent to study in the US in the 1990s.  Sonia finds herself in a small New England town studying literature at an liberal arts college and struggling with cold and loneliness.   Sunny, a little older, has got a master's in journalism and has found a job on the night shift at Associated Press.  Without their knowledge, family members ineptly try to arrange a marriage between them, but the attempt comically falls apart without either of them being aware of what is going on. Sonia becomes involved with brilliant older artist who essentially enslaves her, and from whom she tries to escape throughout the book.  Sunny ultimately rescues her, but it takes hundreds of pages, a lot of magic realism, some brilliant descriptions of India, Mexico, Venice, and New York, before we are given a small glimmer of hope that the pair won't be lonely any more.

 

Desai reportedly spent 20 years working on the book, and it's clear that she struggled to shoe-horn tons of experience into her story.  There are moments which are wonderful, but there are others when this reader just wanted to get the end. 

 

Verdict: a book to take on vacation if you expect to have a lot of down time.  Don't expect to bowled over by it, however. 

Dobryd, or How One Little Girl Survived Disaster

 

The first sentence of Ann Charney's Dobryd is chilling: "By the time I was five years old, I had spent half my life hidden away in a barn loft." Those words took my breath away when I first read them many years ago. Yet the novel's unsentimental, clear-eyed vision offers hope that, with luck, the human spirit can blossom under the most dreadful circumstances.

Dobryd was published in Canada in the mid-1970s to a few, very good reviews. But despite high praise, it wasn't a commercial success. Last year, however, Baraka Books brought out a new edition, giving current readers a chance to read one of the best chronicles of life as a civilian in wartime ever written. 

The story is simple: After two and a half years hiding outside a small town in Poland, a five-year-old girl, her mother, her aunt, and her cousin along with four other adults, all Jews, are rescued by Russian soldiers as World War II draws to a close.

The child is at first terrified by the reaction of the people in her little world: "Weeping and laughing at the same time, they hugged me and embraced one another. I felt smothered in their arms. These embraces were not the ones I was used to; too tight, too close. I was frightened." And, looking outside the barn for the first time, she says: "A large orange circle covered the sky and coloured the world below. The fields, the animals, the farmhouse, all were illuminated in this strange, intense, blood-like colour.I heard myself scream, again and again."

The scream is the one that she has been prevented from letting out during their long period of hiding. Finally Yuri, the Russian soldier who has been carrying her, calms her. "My new friend.carried me outside. All the while his soft voice reassured me, and the sound of those words made me feel safe.. The fresh air of the summer evening felt soothing against my skin. I looked around me. I was no longer afraid."

But the privations she has suffered do not make an occasion for sorrow and regret. Charney says her book is an attempt to distance herself from the work of other survivors of Nazi oppression like Elie Wiesel and André Schwarz-Bart. "I didn't find my experience in their books, and I didn't want to spend my life following the narrow lane of lamentations," she says.

"I wanted to show that one can live through all that and still go on to be a whole human being. I wanted to have the world as my oyster the way it is for other people, and I wanted to feel free to go on to explore other things." She adds with emphasis: "One should really exalt life." That's why the book begins as it does with the liberation, and why there is so much about pleasure: ice cream, the feel of air on skin, the joy of being able to see further than four walls.

The book is also full of  love and luck. Charney was lucky enough to be born to a mother who was strong and clever and had enough resources to pay for help. Then once they were in hiding, the adults around her doted on her, teaching her to read and write, to knit, to sing. Afterwards Yuri became her special friend, and the champion of the family. It is from these repeated experiences of love and attention that Charney has built a sensibility that allows her to say that she had a "happy childhood".

Read it!The first sentence of Ann Charney's Dobryd is chilling: "By the time I was five years old, I had spent half my life hidden away in a barn loft." Those words took my breath away when I first read them many years ago. Yet the novel's unsentimental, clear-eyed vision offers hope that, with luck, the human spirit can blossom under the most dreadful circumstances.

Dobryd was published in Canada in the mid-1970s to a few, very good reviews. But despite high praise, it wasn't a commercial success. Last year, however, Baraka Books brought out a new edition, giving current readers a chance to read one of the best chronicles of life as a civilian in wartime ever written. 

The story is simple: After two and a half years hiding outside a small town in Poland, a five-year-old girl, her mother, her aunt, and her cousin along with four other adults, all Jews, are rescued by Russian soldiers as World War II draws to a close.

The child is at first terrified by the reaction of the people in her little world: "Weeping and laughing at the same time, they hugged me and embraced one another. I felt smothered in their arms. These embraces were not the ones I was used to; too tight, too close. I was frightened." And, looking outside the barn for the first time, she says: "A large orange circle covered the sky and coloured the world below. The fields, the animals, the farmhouse, all were illuminated in this strange, intense, blood-like colour.I heard myself scream, again and again."

The scream is the one that she has been prevented from letting out during their long period of hiding. Finally Yuri, the Russian soldier who has been carrying her, calms her. "My new friend.carried me outside. All the while his soft voice reassured me, and the sound of those words made me feel safe.. The fresh air of the summer evening felt soothing against my skin. I looked around me. I was no longer afraid."

But the privations she has suffered do not make an occasion for sorrow and regret. Charney says her book is an attempt to distance herself from the work of other survivors of Nazi oppression like Elie Wiesel and André Schwarz-Bart. "I didn't find my experience in their books, and I didn't want to spend my life following the narrow lane of lamentations," she says.

"I wanted to show that one can live through all that and still go on to be a whole human being. I wanted to have the world as my oyster the way it is for other people, and I wanted to feel free to go on to explore other things." She adds with emphasis: "One should really exalt life." That's why the book begins as it does with the liberation, and why there is so much about pleasure: ice cream, the feel of air on skin, the joy of being able to see further than four walls.

The book is also full of  love and luck. Charney was lucky enough to be born to a mother who was strong and clever and had enough resources to pay for help. Then once they were in hiding, the adults around her doted on her, teaching her to read and write, to knit, to sing. Afterwards Yuri became her special friend, and the champion of the family. It is from these repeated experiences of love and attention that Charney has built a sensibility that allows her to say that she had a "happy childhood".

Read it!