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Mar 31, 2008

lowell rated it:

I'm going to go ahead and call this my favorite novel of the decade. I've never, ever, EVER, believed in characters as deeply as I believe in the inhabitants of The Big House. You know what - forget the decade! This is as good a novel as I know of, and as intimate and moving a reading experience as I've had, and as rich and vivid a world as I’ve ever read my way into. I don't know if I've ever loved a character as much as I love Aasha. Love though, is not all I feel for this book – and this, I t More...

1 comment like (20 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2011

Kinga rated it:

Just when some thought it was impossible to please me...along comes this book. This deserves 5 stars without any doubt. It baffles me why the world hypes barely mediocre books like 'The Kite Runner' or 'Lovely Bones' when gems like this one go almost unnoticed. There is not a single thing that is wrong with this book. In fact, it is a textbook example of how one should write a novel. Reviving the true art of storytelling, it manages to be gripping, enthralling, and captivating. The novel reveal More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2012

Jen rated it:

After reading rave reviews of this novel, I was just sure it was going to be fantastic.

I didn't even make it past the second chapter.

The language is beautiful, but it's written in a style that makes it difficult to understand at times. A lot of Malaysian dialect is used, which means the dialogue can be choppy when the characters are speaking. The style itself reminds me a lot of Faulkner with that same stream of consciousness flow. As I've never been a fan of Faulkner, More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 17, 2008

britta rated it:

Holy cow. I have NEVER, EVER had a reading experience like this one. Rich and sad and confusing and rewarding. I need a thousand more stars to even get close to how I feel about this book. From the first sentence (oh, that gorgeous sentence!) I knew it was going to be one of those books that would change my life. And it did. I was hurt and in love and sad for and just bowled over by the characters in this book, wanted to curl up with Aasha behind the PVC settee and and watch and wonder and talk More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

vani rated it:

Being someone who grew up in a "Tamil diaspora" family, I was intrigued by this book. The novel is set in Malaysia, much of it in the late 70's and early 80's. Before reading this, I knew very little about Malaysia. The plot involves the stuff of family drama: migration and aspiration, forbidden loves, extramarital affairs, a mysterious murder, but it's written in such a dreamy (without being airy), complicated, and detail-sensitive way that it really works. The book also includes a c More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2009

Andrea rated it:

This book is actually set in Malaysia, but the main characters are an Indian family. The story involves the death of an elderly woman in the family, and the subsequent dismissal of a servant girl who is held responsible. Through the eyes of the six year old protagonist, Aasha, and occasionally other characters, the book swoops backward and forward through time to show the subtle and complicated threads that tie together families in love, loyalty, hatred and deceit. While the book particularly More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 03, 2011

MAP rated it:

I tried. I really really tried. But the ILL due date came up, and I was still only half way through. It wasn't that I didn't want to know what had happened to each of the characters, it was just that...I didn't actually want to have to read the book to find out.

I'm interested that so many people connected so deeply with the characters, because I found each one of them to be completely unappealing or just plain unlikeable.

If I'd had more time with this book, rather than More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 09, 2008

Charlotte rated it:

Oh, I just loved it so so much. All through the last 50 pages I kept thinking, how is this possibly going to end? And then of course it ended in the most perfect, heartbreaking way. If there is such a thing as a romp without the romping, this is it. Also, it is one of the only novels I've ever read to make me feel very very hungry one minutes and then very very not hungry the next. Most only do one or the other. The word bittersweet isn't bitter enough or sweet enough. And ghosts! Is it any surp More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2009

Evanston Public added it

I don’t know if Tolstoy ever considered visiting Malaysia (or even if he was aware of its existence), but he would have been interested to find that his belief about unhappy families holds true there, too. It’s hard to say who is the unhappiest member of the Balakrishnan family. Is it Chellam, the much abused and scorned house servant? Maybe it’s Paati, the unreasonable demanding, paranoid grandmother who detests her daughter-in-law and misses the attentions of her grandchildren. But, no, I thin More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 11, 2011

Linda rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Oct 12, 2011

Rita marked it as to-read

Kinga is enthusiastic:

Just when some thought it was impossible to please me...along comes this book. This deserves 5 stars without any doubt. It baffles me why the world hypes barely mediocre books like 'The Kite Runner' or 'Lovely Bones' when gems like this one go almost unnoticed. There is not a single thing that is wrong with this book. In fact, it is a textbook example of how one should write a novel. Reviving the true art of storytelling, it manages to be gripping, enthralling, an More...

0 comments like

Oct 09, 2011

Deidre rated it:

And another book that takes place in a hot, humid country where there is a great chasm between the lives of the haves and the have-nots. I googled Malaysia, and it is truly a world away.

I think the review I read of this book said it was poetry in novel form and I think they were right. I was pulled in by her prose. On page two, she describes a misty morning in Malaysia:

“Here the town’s languid throng feels distant even on hot afternoons; on drizzly mornings like thi More...

0 comments like

Sep 01, 2011

Naeem rated it:

Another one that I could not put down. In part because I lived through the time period that Samarasan covers -- 1980s Malaysia, even if I lived in KL and not Ipoh.

Samarasan is the master of detail and slow motion action. The pace of book reminded me of the Kubrick film Barry Lyndon. Thirty pages can go by and Samarasan may only cover how a character moves from one part of the house to the other. Unlike the film however, the book is a micro study. Everything important takes place More...

0 comments like

Jan 06, 2011

Travis rated it:

This is the story of the Rajasekharans, an Indian family in Malaysia. It jumps around through time through three generations, though the main focus is on the "present" of the story (set in 1980) and several events that happen all around the same time.[return][return]I'm really not sure how much I liked it or not, so I gave it three stars, because that's in the middle, and there were things I liked and things I didn't, and nothing really swayed me to the love or hate side. But I did enj More...

0 comments like

Oct 16, 2010

Thinesh rated it:

As a Malaysian of Tamil origin myself like the author and her characters, I must say I have rarely related to literary characters more than those in this book, or indeed to the themes and tension within it. This is not simply because of a shared background, but because all the characters are in their own ways so humourous, so pitiable, so selfish, so trapped and so ignorant. Ultimately, so human. Indeed, the story itself is suffused with longing and tragedy, hope and resignation, like modern Mal More...

0 comments like

Aug 07, 2009

Taylor rated it:

I really liked this book, although for some reason it took me FOREVER to read. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm fascinated by Indian culture, but the fact that this novel was about Indians in Malaysia was especially interesting. I have to admit that before I read this I didn't know anything about post-colonial Malaysia and its struggles, but I definitely want to learn more now. At any rate, it's hard to believe that this novel began as an MFA thesis. It's incredibly complex, dense, and ass More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 31, 2010

Khaya rated it:

I thought this book was fabulous.

The story begins at the end and basically works backward with a little back-and-forth within that structure, a device which would have been irritating and ineffective in the hands of a less gifted author but worked beautifully here. As a result of the structure, events which seem minor at first gradually take on a breathtaking symbolism and significance as you begin to discover their roots, and the story becomes deeper and deeper as you keep reading. More...

23 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 26, 2011

Sobia rated it:

her writting is concentrated too much on the detail of the surrounding until they drift away from the real plot of the story! till the end you cant seem to find the main characters in this story!..her hatred towards certain religion & race is surprisingly spoken openly , & one wonders what it got to do with the story altogether....!....in the end Preeta is pretty lame....good in describing the details but bad in creating a story!!

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 05, 2009

Ruth rated it:

I see I'm not the only person raving about this book. I just plucked it off the shelf in the Popular Library, & my luck there has not been all that great so I was a bit dubious . . . but within seconds of starting to read I could tell that this writer's hand is sure, & the longer I read the more amazed & enthralled I was.

I had never read a novel set in Malaysia, & this one provides an amazing window into that country in recent times, along with some 19th- & 20th-century history with More...

0 comments like

Nov 30, 2009

Wingstodust rated it:

This is a book that’s seriously hard to love. When I say this, I don’t mean that this is a horribly written book or anything. In fact, I think the writing is lovely, if sometimes a little overwrought. No, what makes this book hard to read is the fact that none of the characters are likeable. The very premise itself is about how people fail each other, and this process is very painful to watch. No one in this story comes off with their hands untainted. I think I could have came to terms with this More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 19, 2012

Manu rated it:

Preeta Samarasan's debut novel begins with the kind of prose that actually seems like poetry in disguise - with a description of a part of Malaysian geography. The narrative begins in 1980, on Kingfisher Lane in Ipoh, in the Big House, owned by the Rajasekharans - Raju (Appa) a leading lawyer and a pillar of the community, erstwhile socialist, Vasanthi, his wife, from circumstances far below his, their children Uma, Suresh and Aasha in that order, Paati, the matriarch whose disapproval of her da More...

0 comments like

Dec 16, 2011

M rated it:

It's a very well written novel filled with a dysfunctional and unsympathetic family. I'm a sucker for flawed characters and this novel manages to create a while family of them. I found myself hating and at the same time feeling sorry for most of the family because it was clear why they acted the way they did ( except for Raju and his mother, they were just awful people to begin with). Character-wise they are well developed and they dysfunction of the family is a perfect reflection of the situati More...

0 comments like

Sep 25, 2009

Rebekah rated it:

I began this book as it was recommended by a friend, whose friend had written it. I now find myself unsettled, thinking back and mulling over the events I read about. This book is both sensitive and evocative. It centers on a particularly tumultuous time in Malaysia's self-fashioning. The family involved is broken, but its members do not realize that truth. What is most striking is the author's paean (ironic, in my jaded opinion) to American democracy and equality that ends the text. The callous More...

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Jun 14, 2011

Gregory rated it:

Evening Is The Whole Day is a story about silence and disappointment. Samarasan slowly draws out the story of two years in the life of a rich Indian family in Malaysia and the past that has brought them to the present circumstances. The characters are well developed and that is clear from the beginning but the reader is really unable to sympathize with them for almost the entire first half of the novel.

One really great thing about it is the descriptive nature of the novel. Samarasan r More...

0 comments like

Jul 29, 2008

Sanjay rated it:

Lush evocation of the activities of a dysfunctional Indian-Malaysian family over the decades -- very well-written indeed, but a bit over-ripe and, ultimately, spinning off into too many directions. Notable for its lyricism and the quality of its sentences, however.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 01, 2011

Whirl rated it:

I loved the writing style in this book. It was engaging, descriptive, and really transported me to another place and time. Peppered with Malaysian (and Tamil-Malaysian) slang and references, it offered a lyrical compliment to the more straight-forward nonfiction book that I read about Borneo this month. I also loved the character development. By the end of the book, the nuances and personalities of each of the main characters shone through, providing an explanation of their motivations. Wha More...

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Feb 12, 2008

wmc rated it:

Brilliant, unrestrained storytelling. Points of view are staggering, the characters each given completely believable sympathetic and unsympathetic platforms, and the words on each page utterly flood your senses. Reserve this for your "this is Literature" pile.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 28, 2008

elizabeth rated it:

Unbelievably incredibly spectacularly wildly amazingly awesome. Like other books for which the preceding is not hyperbole, this novel kind of ruined me for other books for a while. But it was worth it. Thank you, Preeta. Such a gift.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 02, 2011

Fathima rated it:

i read this book much more slowly than i tend to read novels of this length, but i found two things about it overwhelming.
first is the language. it's dramatic and dramatically insightful. consider the book's opening paragraph:
There is, stretching delicate as a bird’s head from the thin neck of the Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its beak into the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird’s More...

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Oct 09, 2008

Gabriela added it

great book. really well written. the characters have dimensions! I didn't feel forced to identify or sympathize with anyone in particular. this is really one of the best books I've ever read.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)