A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club) | Rohinton Mistry | A Fine Balance Between Hope and Despair

A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club) | Rohinton Mistry | A Fine Balance is a fine book

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A Fine Balance (Op...

	A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club) Rohinton Mistry Vintage, 2001 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 570 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Fine Balance Between Hope and Despair

A Fine Balance is the story of 4 people in an Indian city in 1975, during the State of Emergency declared by the Prime Minister. Dina Dalal worked as a seamstress. Although her brother had money, Dina was determined to make a living on her own. When her husband was killed in an accident on the day of their 3rd Anniversary, Dina's life changed forever. She refused to be arranged into another marriage, preferring to sew to make a living for herself. But 20 years later, her eyes began to fail. She needed desperately to find a new way to survive. So she took on work from an export company. But she needed to hire some tailors to actually make the dresses.

Enter Ishvar Darji, and his nephew Omprakash. The two tailors had left their village, hoping to find work in the big city. Ishvar and Om had survived many years of suffering and heartache before reaching the city. Ishvar and his brother had been born into the Chamaar caste. A working class caste of untouchables. But their father had hopes for his boys, and sent them away to learn a new trade - the trade of the tailor. And the boys flourished, which didn't sit well in their village where caste violence was the norm. When Om's father defied the laws of the caste by standing up and wanting his vote to count in an election, the entire family was murdered. Om and Ishvar escaped the brutal killings only because they were out of town at the time. Now, they needed a job as desperately as Dina needed tailor.

Maneck Kohlah was a boy born in a small mountain village. His parents owned the local store and their family prospered until expansion and new ideas came to the village. Maneck's father didn't want things to change, and it was causing this business to slide. Instead of training Maneck to take over and modernize the family business, it was decided he needed to go to college to learn a trade. So he was sent into the city completely against his own wishes and desires. But life at the college hostel was horrible. When his only friend, the leader of the student council disappeared, Maneck needed to find somewhere else to stay. He didn't feel safe. His mother was childhood friends with Dina Dalal. She needed a paying guest and Maneck needed a room.

The first half of the book shifts back and forth between the past and the present. In this way, we get an understanding of the backstory of each of the four main characters. The second half of the book is all in the present, with the four living under one roof, learning about each other and themselves. It took me a long time to get into the story, and I'm not really sure why. Although the book is well over 600 pages, it instantly grabs you.

The horror of the 70's in India is definitely not a story for everyone. The volatility of the situation was really hard for me to comprehend. The staged political rallies, where people were forced to show their support of the Prime Minister. The "Beautification" of the city, that included tearing down all the low-income housing and leaving many homeless, including Ishvar and Om. The forced sterilization of people to cut back on the population surge. The brutal caste system that condemned a person at birth. How the ruling upper class tread on the backs of the poor to push forth their own agendas. These are just a few of the topics touched on by Mistry. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking, sad, depressing story.

I loved Dina, even when she was trying so hard to stay hard-nosed with the tailors. She had such fear that they would take advantage of her. She was strong and independent, but had lived alone for so long she actually feared companionship. She probably changed the most during the story, and it was a wonderful change. I found Maneck to be a bit on the spoiled side, but his biggest strength was his ability to see beyond the boundaries of class. He was the glue that held the four together. Om and Ishvar endured so much, from page one until the end. Theirs was the story that broke my heart.

Can I recommend this book? Absolutely. It's a beautifully written story that needed to be told. But if you are looking for a breath of fresh air or a heartwarming story to make you feel good, this is definitely not it. It's a hard read because you want to see good things happen to these wonderful people. And yet you just know as you turn each page, it's not going to end very well. This story really affected me: It made me angry and sad....and extremely thankful that I have never known such adversity. And that, my friends, is the sign of a good book.

"You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair".

A quote to live by.

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A Fine Balance is a fine book

I would like to say that this is quite possibly the best book i have read in my whole life. I am a high school freshman and i have been reading books constantly since third grade. This book is a thinker when you first start it. You aren't sure what is happening and why it is so interesting but you just keep going until you start to fully understand the story. When you read the back of this book it is a very bland sounding book but when you get into it the details really take you to a city in India. I am ashamed that this book is tarnished with the Oprah Book Club symbol but it is still good (I would like to say that i am against anything that Oprah has ever done). If you read this book you won't be disappointed unless you are the type of person who likes comedy and doesn't like reading books longer than four hundred pages.

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Excellent!

I found this book when an aquaintance told me it was better than the Kite Runner, which is one of my favorite novels from the past few years. So, hearing that evaluation, I had to read "A Fine Balance." In my opinion, it was not better than the Kite Runner -- but an excellent tale in and of itself. In this story, we meet four characters whose lives become interconnected in India during the '70s. You learn about where each character came from and how they got where the are. There are many tragic moments, and thankfully there are some lighthearted ones too. I would recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in exploring other cultures and countries. My biggest criticism is the novel's length. There were sections that could have been edited to make it a more compact story, but you definitely learn a lot about each character in the process.

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Review No. 542: Worthwhile

This book, published in 1995, began in India during the 1975-6 political emergency, when PM Indira Gandhi imposed martial law to avoid being thrown out of office. It ended with a brief epilogue set in 1984, following her assassination.

The main characters were a poor, middle-aged Parsi widow, a male Parsi university student, and two low-caste Hindu tailors from the countryside. They were drawn into each other's lives in the city, warmed to each other over time, and enjoyed a brief period of happiness as a makeshift family before falling victim to the problems afflicting their society: corruption, illegality, caste oppression -- a system that gave the powerless no defense against the whims and designs of the powerful. To the main actors were added a host of supporting characters: relatives, beggars, their master, slum-dwellers, goons, a landlord's agent, policemen, businessmen, and so on.

I enjoyed most how the author set up the early interactions between the main characters, following each one's life and giving each a distinct background. The novel's sweep, leading to setpieces like the forced busing of slum-dwellers into the countryside to attend a political mass meeting, the destruction of a slum, and the dragooning of the unemployed into forced labor. (The author showed well how ironically a government whose programs claimed to help the poor -- with slum clearing, labor, and sterilization -- merely increased their misery.) And the poignant ending, where time had marked all the characters, who'd moved continually between happiness and tragedy, who'd changed in some ways but not others.

Least enjoyable was the telegraphing of most of the tragedies that occurred in the book. And the abrupt changes in several of the characters midway through, such as the widow, the beggarmaster, or the young tailor.

Beautiful images or ideas in the book included a quilt whose patches reflected the passing of time in the lives of the characters. The description of God as a giant quiltmaker with an infinite variety of designs and whose pattern was impossible for any one person to see. Each character's search to regain some sense of family. The difficulty that people had in drawing lines between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness. The wisdom that "you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes 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."

Also: the insight that everything changes, whether we like it or not, and change must sooner or later be embraced. The need for hope to balance despair. The resilience of those who'd suffered greatly but could still maintain a sense of balance. And one whose future seemed brighter but who couldn't keep a sense of balance and connection and so was lost.

Slightly surprising was the virtual absence of description of specific places throughout the novel. A reference to Victoria Garden and the Hanging Gardens suggested the setting was Bombay, but unless I'm mistaken that city wasn't named and no other specific locations or descriptions of place appeared.

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OK but cliched

I thought the writing nice at times, the characters sympathetic, but I just found the plot a little too overdone lately and a little too predictable. I found it hard to finish, not because it was depressing (it was, so what - you expect a happy novel about poverty and despair??), but just because it didn't tell me anything new - about India, poverty, or the human condition in general. I gave it 3 stars only because I think it would be a good book for someone who knows nothing about that era in Indian history and culture.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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