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.