Good reading althought, as others reviews state, too much suffering, excessive tragedies, and when you think it is over, Mistry finds something even worse for his characters. It looks like the is NO balance afterwards, not even a "fine" balance. It's all too sad.

One of the best books I've read in a very long time. The characters will stay with you for years.

I have never encountered a book so moving as Mistry's A Fine Balance. Following the story of Ishvar and Om, I found myself so invested in what was happening to them - the injustice of India's government is infuriating, and the ways in which the overcoming of an obstacle only leads to another is simultaneously depressing and motivational, due to the resilience of each character.

A Fine Balance is not a light read, but once you begin, you will not be able to stop. Mistry maintains a balance between revealing the utter desperation of the homeless and the ways in which each character finds value in life, despite every force working against it.

I was moved by this book as if I were watching a movie, laughing out loud and crying to myself during the ups and downs of the plot.

The beauty of the book is in the conclusion, as Mistry does not employ any shallow devices to wrap things up in order to make the reader feel redeemed after the devastation. It is realistic, sad, and fulfilling all at once. I left questioning whether or not I would be able to live my life with the same optimism were I in the same situation.

This book will force you to view your life through a different lens, and you will be better off for reading it.

This is not a book for the faint of heart. It relates the interwoven histories of four main characters and several peripheral individulas who impact on their lives. Try to imagine people who are floating together in one huge river in India, a river that is made up of currents of brutality, avarice, corruption and cruelty - all blending and separating and rejoining in a nonending and inescapable life force. The characters never get out. At times they may escape some, or all, of these currents, but only for a short while, and never long enough to be able to stand upright and make a break for the shore.

In the end, some of the characters are destroyd by their toxic environment; others survive and manage to keep (varying amounts of) their spirits alive; none of them are able to get what they wanted out of life.

Both the most beautiful and the most terrible thing about reading this book is that Mr. Mistry's writing is so transcendent that the reader is sucked into the characters' river of despair, comes to know and love its inhabitants, and suffers with them. I had to put the book down several times and come back to it after I had time to catch my breath and regain my equilibrium. Perhaps it is worse if, like me, you have visited India and know that Mr. Mistry is not making this up. His characters may be fictional but their experiences are true.

This book is the epitome of Murphy's Law- what can go wrong, will go wrong. It is so needlessly depressing. I am not one to only read books that are filled with sunshine and rainbows, but like many other reviewers have said, the problems faced by the characters in this book are SO numerous that as I read it, I became jaded. This book exhausted and numbed me and towards the end, the misfortunes of the characters had no affect on me.
I do feel like the author stereotyped India and Indian citizens to some degree. I feel like non Indians or non South Asians who read this book will walk away with an image of India that is not particularly accurate.
While his writing style is quite good, it gets a bit claustrophobic. Overall, the depression just makes it unbelievable. I did not enjoy this book at all.

I don't like it when books rely on anthropological details to provide interest -- just the different customs of a place (India) and the constraints placed on characters' lives is not enough to make a book interesting, imo. I need to really see inside the characters and see how their lives and growth are informed and constrained by what their situations provide and do not provide, and I didn't feel this here. These characters were not much better than types to me, the penny-pinching small business owner, e.g.

From its first page to its last, AFB is a marvel. RH paints a world in meticulous and breath-taking detail. Even at 600 pages, not one sentence of this novel is superfluous. AFB reads quickly and absorbingly. But it is no easy read: the stuff of this novel is the stuff of tragedies, great and small, and often unimaginable. I have no doubt of the realism, the 'authenticity', of the story RH tells. If I emerged scathed and scarred from reading it, I also emerged the wiser. No novel has so deeply immersed me in another culture and in other lives as this one did. I cannot begin to do it justice in a brief review.

This book is so tragegic, it is depressing. One unspeakable tragedy follows another this entire book, where's the happiness? The happiness described in this book is when you are not enduring an unimaginable tragedy. You can not imagine how bad these characters lives are until you read this book. And you think, well now that they have all had such hardship and struggle, now there will be a little happiness, a little hope for things to come, NO- in this book, more tragedy. Although it is well written, with beautiful characters, it overwelms you with heartache, to the point where you can feel no more pain for these characters. You have no hope for them and your at a loss of how to feel when faced with more tragedy, to the point where I am numb from it. I wanted to finish this book to end the suffering of all of the characters.

One of the most captivating of the books I've read this month, "A Fine Balance" brilliantly captures the essence of a poverty-stricken city within a politically unstable India of the 1970s. The story is set mostly during the two-year State of Emergency (comparable to martial law), which began in 1975 when protests against the government were used as an excuse for the prime minister to hold on to power. It centers on four individuals - Dina Dalal, a Parsi widow who's struggling to make ends meet; Manek Kohlah, a sensitive college student and Dina's boarder; Ishvar Mochi, a tailor of immense patience and perseverance; and Omprakash Mochi, Ishvar's nephew. Needing a dependable income, Dina takes in sewing and hires Ishvar and Om as tailors. Much of the novel is about the hardships of Ishvar and Om and their histories, as well as those of Dina's and Manek's. Most poignant are the interwoven events that created a "family" out of these disparate individuals.

The city where the four reside is unnamed throughout, but from descriptions can be assumed to be Mumbai (Bombay). Many references are also made to a nameless prime minister (a she), obviously Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter who was PM from 1966 to 1977, and then again from 1980 to 1984 when she was assassinated. The reader quickly realizes that Mr. Mistry is highly critical of Mrs. Gandhi's government and policies.

Mr. Mistry's sweep is wide--the story encompasses tumultuous political times and periods of immense social upheavals, depicting a democracy that is "at the best of times...a seesaw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion." Each chapter incorporates these, adding much depth and realism to the story and its characters. There are many cultural issues and historical events that serve as backdrops, and some historical figures alluded to--the long outlawed and rigid caste system; the 1947 partition which created the separate republics of India and Pakistan; graft and corruption; forced sterilization; slums; forced slave labor; the Mahatma, Mohandas Gandhi; violence and discrimination against the lower caste chamaar (the untouchables); and grinding poverty just to name a few.

The suffering, misfortune and misery (to refer to the characters' experiences as challenges would be a gross understatement) depicted here are relentless and those averse to stories of insurmountable poverty and pain should best avoid this. Life as depicted in the unforgiving streets of Mumbai is "...but a sequence of accidents--a clanking chain of chance events...a string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity..." relieved only momentarily by humor and the brief visit of good luck. Mistry does not sugarcoat anything and as unpalatable as the facts of his native country in that time period were, they were what they were.

Curious if the characters' lives are somewhat exaggerated, I consulted a friend, a charming Hindu lady in her 70s and of the higher caste, kshatriya. Her recollections do lend credence to the suffering of the untouchables depicted here, but one thing is a curiosity to her. As a believer of Krishna, she insists that love and respect, at least during her youth in India, were above the dictates of caste. Evidently, the villains of Mr. Mistry's story are of differing opinion and the tailors whose never-ending rounds of ill fortune may very well have been composites of the countless poor and disenfranchised.

It's a magnificent novel, really, and its story is quite fascinating. It was my welcome companion for several evenings (it's a bit over 600 pages) and its characters became dramatic fixtures in this reading ritual. From the first page, they ceased to be merely figments of a writer's imagination, but rather real people whose lives I saw unfold and whose conversations I eavesdropped on. This is not just for someone whose interest is piqued by South Asian history, but also for those who see fiction as a means to better understand the human spirit and its capacity to endure. The author's use of a Balzac quote that refers to Le Père Goriot creates an association that is justifiable. "A Fine Balance," like Goriot, is a 'human comedy,' one of corruption and greed, the kind whose toll is too high by anyone's standard.

This book is written from multiple perspectives, thus, allows the reader valuable insight into what life then was like. I would recommend it for someone who is looking for a book with depth rather than a shallow storyline - it is not a "feel good" book - but certainly very captivating and worth reading. I think someone comes away with a greater appreciation for his/her blessings after reading this book - I recommend it.

It was well written and captivating. I thought though his characters were too one dimensional...like he could have develeoped them more. He was really descriptive and I could really imagine seeing what he was describing. The stories and ending was thought provoking. Like was the whole thing just someones depression focussing on only the negative things around him? Don't wnt to give up anything else but do reccomend it.

I hate to use superlatives,but I think this book is different. One part of the explanation is that I have lived in Bombay(mumbai) and experienced atleast a fraction of the life you find described here.
Mistry has done an amazing job stick the the prose ("actually speaking that is not my job...") ,he has used English they way we use in it India. To anyone who has been home(India), this will tug at the heart strings, for, this is a language in itself. Mistry does not mince words or waste emotion and time over mourning. The events are fiction but have been played out a million times over in various flavours. And continue even today: read the Indian newspapers-lower castes are paraded naked and made to eat human excreatment on a fairly regular basis.
The book is almost epic, maybe even Dickensonion( somebody discription not mine). The book offers so much hope, but is so realistic. This was one book which actually depressed me for a short while( no book or movie has yet done that), yet has also given me hope and made my day more than once. If you are an Indophile or love all things Indian, this book is for you.
If I could I would give it seven stars out of 5.

A modern version of an old-fashioned novel, A Fine Balance held me from the first page. Admittedly I have a weakness for fiction set in contemporary India, but Mistry's seemingly effortless ability to take me into the lives of people so foreign from my own experience was overpowering. I say an old fashioned novel because everything is wrapped up perhaps a bit too neatly at the end. The novel succeeds at so many levels, as a fascinating glimpse into Indian culture, as an engaging story of friendship and the realities of the effects of time and circumstance on friendship, as action and adventure -- I really can't recommend it highly enough!

This is such a beautifully narrated story, with such realism and detail, that I was grateful to simply read it. Although I cared deeply for the characters, and couldn't stop reading to find out what would happen to them, I wasn't hoping for a dramatic ending that 'solved' everything or tied up all the knots. It's not that kind of a story. But the epilogue, I found, was indeed dramatic and hard to believe.

**Spoilers Ahead**
All that Dina wants is her independence, but she ultimately has to go live with her brother, who notes that Dina's fighting spirit has been defeated. The Chamar tailors fight and undergo so much difficulty to break out of their traditional trade and become tailors, but what do they become in the end? Castrated, crippled beggars! The rent-collector also becomes a beggar. Maneck is always hurt about being separated from his family, and finally when he makes his peace with his parents, and lets the reader think he will, at least, find some contentment, he is broken by the sad states the tailors and Dina are reduced to, and commits suicide. He has no thought for his mother waiting all these years for him, her only hope.

Realism need not be all sad and depressing. Mistry shows it himself in the story, but he breaks the feeble thread of hope on which his characters survive, leaving them crippled, and precariously balanced. I simply couldn't buy Maneck's suicide, and Ishvar's losing his legs. It's unrealistic for him to wait for his legs to become nearly black before seeking medical help.

While the book seems well paced and balanced, the ending, and epilogue look forced and hurried. For this, A Fine Balance loses a star and drops from excellent to v. good.

This is by far one of my favorite books. Through just a few characters Mistry manages to create a vivid picture of India, it's peoples and their problems. I lived there for three years. Through this book i learned more about the social classes and lives there than i did while living there.

I devoured A Fine Balance like a very fine meal and at the end wanted even more. The only real problem I had was I guessed what was going to happen 3 times in advance but that didn't bother me the slightest. Mistry is an absolute genius and the Indian World he writes about is both enchanting and tragic all at the same time.

John

This book is a must-read, especially if you're familiar with Bombay. And even if you're not, this book is an experience. The prose, simple, and often times colloquial, transports you effortlessly to a different time and place. You see through the eyes of the characters, feel for them and through them. I just finished reading it last night and I can still feel the knot in my chest. The story is still sinking in, and the more it does, the tighter that knot gets. I'm going to take a while to recover :)

Mistry is a great story teller and in this book he is in his best form. It is a masterpiece. Don't be surprised if you can't put it down once you start reading it.

This book was an unexpected page-turner. The way the lives of the characters are interwoven is very artful, and the exploration of class issues really made me think about the universality of human nature. Incredible.

For all of those that are acquainted with the history of India, this book will move you. It is easy to deduce that the events in this book were inspired by historical events and cultural happenings in India. The fact that Mistry is unafraid to expose the many atrocities of a suffering India is noble and brave on his part. Although not explicitly written, the topics in this book are contraversial and do reflect certain things about India that obviously have not perished with time. The next step is to ask, "Why?" Can you find a solution? Can anyone? Those are the questions that arose in my mind first. Which questions will you ask?

It is certainly a good read. At the same time, it stereotypes the squalor and poverty of India.
Although technically well written, I will never read it again. Nothing good can ever happen to the characters. When you think the worst is over, the author throws another gaunlet and makes their fate even worse.

Overall, a depressing read.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I know this sounds really bad, and I don't want to sound mean in any way, but this book is actually more enjoyable (to me, anyway) if it is read like it's a Dark Comedy. It's just so ridiculous, yet so sad, and so tragic, yet so utterly unbelieveable toward the end. The effect it had on me was that it just made me feel tired. Worn out. The last hundred or so pages, I was just skimming the lines, trying to get the general idea, trying to make it to the finish line. It made me tired. The characters were a bit shallow, so much so that I had difficulty distinguishing the various misfortunes to them. Povery, despair, overpopulation, exploitation of the poor, it's all there and in spades. The highs were really, really high and the lows were these crashing, devastating lows and they happened at such a pace that it has a burdening effect on the reader. Seriously, it's a good book, but it could be about a hundred or so pages shorter, and toned down a bit! It gets to the point where it's just funny, in a sort of mean way.

After completing this rather long book (601 pages) I found that I was left with a vast range of impressions of the book, which would make perfect sense considering that Rohinton Mistry tries to cover so much ground in his vast novel. I enjoyed the storyline that tells the history of the main characters and how they happen to end up at the same place.

Mistry's character development was uneven however. The character of Dina Dalal is the most highly developed personality. She is a beautiful widow in her 40s trying to maintain her independence is a society where a single woman would find survival difficult, even if they were Parsi. She is reserved and the tragic death of her young husband is a defining moment for her. Yet she does not go insane with grief, as did her mother when here physician father dies. Maneck Kohlah is developed well, especially in his youth, until the end of the story and Mistry selects to make a point about family and connectedness and thus sacrifices this character to the writer's agenda. I can certainly deal with sad situations in a novel, but when the sadness is constructed so as to convey a philosophical point, and then I grow weary. The two tailors, Ishvar Darji and his nephew Om Darji, are treated as individuals but also as types. They are from the lower castes and thus every possible hardship is heaped upon their heads to convey the immense social injustice and human cruelty present in Indian society during the 1974-75 political emergencies. To some extent the tragedies become so dramatic and so frequent that I kept wondering "what next can happen to these poor guys?'

A range of secondary colorful characters move the action forward, much like in a Charles Dickens or Jane Austin novel. These characters, some of which are eccentric and odd, however are meant to play a range of 'types' which includes beggars, prisoners, murderers, thugs, criminals, street performers, lawyers, business men, and religious types. They are entertaining to the extreme except for Mistry's tendency to have them voice political ideology. The character of Beggar master is a good example. Too quickly he warms to Dina, Maneck, Om, and Ishvar and tells them his sordid past and the horror of his profession whereby he buys children and mutilates them to become more profitable beggars. He even shows them his sketchbook where he designs beggar strategies and then mutilates other humans to fit the image he wishes to convey to elicit maximum charity and pity. He is a sculptor of pathos using human flesh as his medium.

Whereas the characters of Dina and Ishvar are relatively well developed, Maneck and Om both have sharp truncated treatment in the final passages of the book. Once Om is mutilated by the village leader who killed his parents and little sisters, he almost disappears from the narrative. We never hear his rage or his response or his reconciliation.

Thus we are left with the uneasy feeling that even Maneck and Om are types, meant more to make a political or socio-economic or social injustice point than to explore a personality and the response of that personality to the social and political conditions around them. Maneck seems to symbolize the new young Indian, pulled from their historic regional family roots and sent forth to become technicians. Maneck develops a surrogate family with Dina, Ishvar, and Om that serves him well for two years, but the 8 years he then spends in Dubai seem to completely disorient him. He views his parent's desires for him to leave the old life behind and become a technocrat in the new Indian economy as personal rejection. Thus Mistry not only wishes to convey to us the horrors of the Indian poor, the mass corruption in government, the large criminal element that preys on the poor, but Mistry also wants us to sense that the middle class is paying a price for modernization, which is alienation from their own children.

The narrative is a bit long and could have been shortened by 200 pages with no real loss to the overall novel. Yet the ending of the novel seems truncated and uneven. I was entertained throughout the entire novel but sometimes in a comic dark humor way that I just don't think Mistry intended. When a writer wishes to make a social justice point and makes that point by having gross social injustice heaped upon his main characters, the writer runs the risk of ridicule if the strategy is used too often.

This is absolutely the best book I have ever read. It is very well written and has memorable character with whom I became very close to. This book has left quite an impression on me with a new understanding of life in a third world country and how cruel life can be. My only complaint is that it seems as though Rohinton has speed through the ending and lacked the increadable detail that was through out the rest of the story.

This is one of the 15 best books I've read in my life. The writing is good, as is the character development and depth. It accurately portrays India, from what I've seen in traveling there and talking with people. It's entertaining and educating, not often combined well.
When I started it, I thought it was going to be like "The Glass Palace", which I read before going to Burma. But it's not a history of generations over great spans of time - it stops at a set of 4 characters after covering some of their predecessors and goes into depth on the lives of those 4.
Best $11 I've spent in a long time.
Paul

I am not going to give away the story line, or any details about the plot in this review, except to say that this is a novel centered around the lives of a few people during what is known as "The Emergency", a period of time in India in the late 70s when the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi (daughter of Nehru), decided to impose massive restrictions on society, including the passing of heart-warming laws advocating suppression of free speech, forcible sterilizations etc. Some Indians, especially upper-class Indians, fondly remember it as the period when "trains always ran on time, and you could set your watch to their arrival and departures". Apparently, it wasn't so terrible for everyone, which is why I find it confusing that all the characters in the book are struck by an endless litany of misfortune. It just goes on and on, and when you're about half way into the book, you're not so much enjoying it as much as placing cynical wagers with yourself as to what misfortune is going to befall these people next. It's not a particularly bad book, it's just completely depressing, and there's not much of a point made to any of the misfortune, much like real life. But why should I go from one depressing paradigm (my views on reality), into another much more depressing paradigm(Mistry's views on reality) ? At that point, I stopped reading the book. I had about 30 pages left to finish, which should give you an indication of how much of a page turner this book was. If you want a better book about Indian society or life in general, try The Moor's Last Sigh or The Satanic Verses, both by Salman Rushdie, but if you are hoping to be somewhat entertained, give this book a miss.

This was a very good book. It took me a little bit of time to get into the book, as the characters names were a little hard to follow. But once the story got started this book was really good. It was a bit depressing though.

I'm visiting Amazon to purchase this book for a group of girlfriends. I read this book years ago and still can't get it out of my mind. I'm still haunted by the characters and yes, as dramatic as this sounds, I feel like I've grown a little as a person since reading this book. You can't help but connect to these characters and feel their hardships. As another reviewer commented you can see, feel, taste and smell India on each page. It is a long book, but please don't be put off by the size. You will devour each and every page with renewed vigor! Enjoy!!

This is one of the most depressing books that I have read in a long long time. The main characters in this story go though one trouble after another for seemingly no reason. In fact they hardly have anything good going for them. Surprisingly they behave really well for their circumstances.

People unfamiliar with India may believe that this is the norm, which isn't true. This is a fictious story created by amalgamating the worst conditions possible for different people into the lives of all the characters of this book.

The story about the beggar master having a step brother is one of the most dramatic fiction created to bring out some more NEGATIVITY.

I read this with a reading group I recently joined and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You would think to yourself "this character is a total jerk" and then slowly it is revealed why this person acts like this. You find yourself really liking the characters you previously disliked. I wish we could see all people like that.

If you want to understand what it is like to live in India, this is a perfect book. An engaging story that you won't want to put down, this book will captivate you and not let go. If you can get the audiotapes, the narrator does an excellent job of making this book absolutely come alive. Through the stories of different people who come together, the reader gets an inside glimpse of India. I recommend this book highly - its a long one, but you won't want it to end!!

The story really touched my heart and soul. Very beautifully written, but depressing ! Seems the misery never ends. Life so unfair to everyone, to each character in this book.
If you like to know more about Indian culture and their struggle in human life system, you might like this book like I do. Just be prepared to get depressed after reading this !

I learned about the misery and injustice of being poor, or even middle class, in India during "the Emergency". There was nothing objectionable but nothing brilliant about the writing itself. I don't mind books that depict the grimness of life, but I prefer books that temper it with at least a little hope (see The Road by Cormac McCarthy). Maybe I want a little less realism.

This is a wonderful book. I read it about 3 months ago and it is still haunting me with its brilliance. One of the best books I have ever read.

I have always been fascinated by India and the vast extremes in fortune that co-exist there. I've visited the country and known a lot of Indians and one thing that has always struck me is that they seem to have no concept of self-pity or even sympathy for others. There seems to be an acceptance in the Indian culture that life is unfair. Sitting around thinking "woe is me" gets you nowhere. However the reverse side of that is that people don't really expect their circumstances in life to change dramatically. The American dream, that "anyone can be President" idea, doesn't exist in India. The class that you're born in will be the class you die in. Accept that, and move on.

Against this background, we have Ishvar and Omprakavash, who are born in a lowly caste. They are trying to improve their lot in life through hard work and taking calculated chances, but again and again life knocks them back. Dina, too, is a plucky heroine full of ingenuity. She is also trying to make the best of her circumstances.

If this was an American novel it might have had a neat and happy ending. Instead life deals these people some unspeakably terrible cards. There are parts of this book that are almost unbearable to read. Horrible, horrible things happen to Ishvar and his family. But how do they people react? They keep going. The connections they have with the people around them sustain them and get them through, and then life gets better (and the book gets easier), for a while. In the end it is Maneck, who on paper has the easiest circumstances, who has the least resilience to life's ups and downs.

This is such a great book and the characters are so real. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's a sad book, but it's also optimistic and even funny in parts. What do you do when life is unspeakably awful? You move forward.

I can only say I'm at a bit of a loss for words. Beautifully written with texture and depth, that brings to mind the destitute world of Charles Dickens,this epic story is crushing throughout, but devastating at it's epilogue. Tragic, and heartbreaking,this story and it's quartet of characters won't be easy to shake off.

One of the most heart-wrenching books ever written. In addition, it offers tremendous insight into the lives of street level Indians and their struggles in a system where human life and the dignity of an individual person is absent (informed by a "so what, reincarnation will take care of it or punish it" attitude).

This is a necessary work for Americans to read to understand India beyond the frenetic joyousness of Bollywood or the class-struggle induced by outsourced jobs and white-collar underbidding. The characters and political setting give voice to the unique challenges of the world's most populous democracy and those ssocial mores and taboos that arrest her progress and damn her citizens to inescapably unhappy lives. Sad and profound and hopeless, this is India's Le Pere Goriot.

I give this book 2 stars only because the author has some skills in the craft of writing (but not as a novelist. There is no plot, no theme, no message (unless you count hopelessness). The book is depressing, miserable and endless. It is also unecessarily scatological and gross. Believe me I can read ugly and miserable as well as the next reader if there is some point to it but I sure couldn't find it. Sorry.

I'm confused about how this book won so many prestigious awards. The writing is mediocre, especially the dialogue which sounds forced and fake, as the character's utterings are used to advance the plot. Also, despite the panoramic view of life in turbulent times in India, the book seems, somehow, shallow. On the other hand, Mistry does give us a glimpse of a world utterly foreign to most Americans, and nicely draws the contrast between the more sophisticated city dwellers like Dina and her brother, and the villagers, bound by superstition and a brutal caste system. Also, the cruelty described in this book is truly sickening. One wonders: was Indira Gandhi as much of a monster as Mistry makes her out to be?

This is an excellent book on every level. Worthy of the Nobel Prize. The story and the characters are so realistic and engaging that the only way I knew I was reading was because I remembered I was holding a book. The story flows without a lull. It is written in short sections making it easy to stop and start. Every time I picked the book back up I was immediately reabsorbed into the story. Seemingly insignificant characters reappear in important roles. Everyone's humanity is revealed, even the vilest of characters'.

A big theme is this book is time. How all things are impermanent. How events, upon reflection, hold so much more meaning than when we are experiencing them. How happiness comes from intimacy and that eventually even that is fleeting. Part of the human condition is that we can't hold onto the good times forever - and we don't know how good they are until they are out of reach. As one commenter pointed out, another big theme of the book is how human connection and relationships help people get through the worst of times.

This is an excellent book on every level. Worthy of the Nobel Prize. The story and the characters are so realistic and engaging that the only way I knew I was reading was because I remembered I was holding a book. The story flows without a lull. It is written in short sections making it easy to stop and start. Every time I picked the book back up I was immediately reabsorbed into the story. Seemingly insignificant characters reappear in important roles. Everyone's humanity is revealed, even the vilest of characters'.

Ultimately, this is a book about time. How all things are impermanent. How events, upon reflection, hold so much more meaning than when we are experiencing them. How happiness comes from intimacy and that eventually even that is fleeting. Part of the human condition is that we can't hold onto the good times forever - and we don't know how good they are until they are out of reach.

This is not a light read- but you will remember this book for years after you read it. It is a finely crafted, beautiful book- After I finished reading it I spent hours searching for information on India's geography, politics, social aspects, social policies... The author assumed the reader would know the details, or understand the action without all of the background, and it is very readable without understanding more than the basics about India. I was deeply moved by the book and inspired to spend a good deal of time researching the backstory when I was done, which enhanced my appreciation for both India and this novel. I highly recommend this book often, to many different types of readers.

A friend told me I had to read this. I put her off. And the book. Then, after counting the pages and sighing, I decided to give this tome a try. A Fine Balance is a brilliant commentary on the human spirit and how power, privilege and fear are used to protect the status quo and demonize free societies. It's about history and politics ... and the homeless guy on the train. And the barista at Starbucks that you come to know but keep at a distance. It's about immigrants that cut lawns and help make wines. It's about landlords. And drug dealers. And Ivy League students. It's about you. And the assumptions we all make about other people.

All in all, A Fine Balance is a gorgeous read that imparts depth and character that most novels can't afford to bring to life. Read it now. You'll wish you had read it sooner.

This is by far the worst book i have ever read !! I would never compare this to the "Kite Runner" because that book was a wonderful journey for me. But this was a series of "3 steps forward, 4 steps backward" with every character ! And never did any of the character reach any of their goals or dreams....how depressing !! What a waste of time... I kept hopeful throughout the book that in the end they all would be fortunate enough to rise above all the tragedies in their life and not one of them ever did....

I could write a lot about this book. The author is truly a master storyteller. The story he tells is absolutely heartbreaking. I guess that means he has accomplished what he set out to do with this book. I recommend it for anyone and I can't wait to go out and try some of Mistry's other work. I hope it is as gripping as A Fine Balance.

This is a well-written, well crafted novel. It's as if you could predict the characters' words and actions because Mistry has given them such dimension. Reminiscent of Dickens, it is at once sad, hopeful, humourous, and troubling.

One can dwell on all the horrors that occur to the characters in the book, but I found that though it was indeed sad, it displayed the resilence of humanity. No matter where we are and what we have, we are in fact all trying to find a balance in life. It's fragile (some places remarkably more so than others) but we try. And when our equilibrium is upset we pick up the pieces and try to find a center again. We wouldn't be human if we didn't.

A must read that.