Balance of Fragile Things

by Olivia Chadha

A multicultural American family comes together just as the world around them begins to fall apart...

When Vic Singh finds a dead blue butterfly—out of place in his cold, upstate New York village—he knows something is terribly amiss. Yet he is too busy dodging the bully at his high school, let alone trying to live up to his father’s expectations, to look much further into the environmental oddities around him.

Meanwhile, for Vic’s father, Paul, the ghosts of the past cause him to pressure his son to live up to his Sikh traditions—while his Latvian wife, Maija, is haunted by the present: She’s having new and ominous psychic visions even though she can’t read her own teenage children. Isabella, attempting to lose herself through her role in a school play, has an illness she can't seem to shake—and Vic, trying to find himself, is spending more time alone in nature.

Then Paul’s father and Maija’s mother move in to the family home, upending the delicate balance of this Indian/Latvian family and its two American teenagers. Yet, as the environmental devastation that Vic’s butterflies have forewarned comes to bear, the family comes together in new and unexpected ways.

Olivia Chadha’s lovely, multilayered novel brings us into an extended family of three generations that strives to remain together in an unstable world.

Genres: Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 2012

About the author

Olivia Chadha is the author of Balance of Fragile Things, the Mechanist duology with Rise of the Red Hand and Fall of the Iron Gods, and a contributor to the anthologies The Gathering Dark and Magic Has No Borders.

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

With all the sink holes in the news, it's not surprising someone wrote a novel centered around the problem. A wonderful intercultural melange of voices that centers around the mystery of illness and sink holes in a New York town.

[Alex Dow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. While this story evokes a host of issues (first and second gen immigrant identity, environmentalism, personal property, racial violence, and complicated family dynamics), it does it while focussing on a flawed but ultimately strong and positive family (been a while since I've read something where that is the case, turns out I'm more used to disfunction carrying the day.) It's actually a really fun read too, with just enough genre to keep me awake reading later than I had planned. For example, the Oma and Papaji duo engaging in a secretive investigation, made me think about how much I'd enjoy a whole series of noir detective stories about them. There's definitely something right about pairing these two stubborn grandparents, one a Latvian Holocaust survivor and the other a Sikh Partition survivor.

[Amara Cudney · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Balance of Fragile things was a book I wasn't sure I would like. As it turned out, I loved it. Chadha is a gifted and poetic writer. Some of the things I enjoyed the most was that she took a Latvian/Indian family (which I knew nothing about) and layered normal teenage problems, husband/wife issues, aging parents and especially, I loved the introduction to butterflies. This was a wonderful book for anyone who enjoys learning through reading, being exposed to new cultures and seeing how children experience being different from Americans but bound to their own traditions by family.

[Seri · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.2
Hmmm. Read it for a writing course. It's your typical multicultural novel where family members with different backgrounds and personalities learn to live/deal with each other. But it also focuses a lot on character development, especially for the boy protagonist (though it's far from a Bildungsroman.) The book spans about 1 month and ends on a (ridiculously) good note:
-Family comes together
-"Bad" person dies
-Rain that has been plaguing New York suddenly stops
-Boy (Vic) defeats bully and gets girl
-Girl (Isabella, Vic's sister) gets her boy
Everything is too perfectly wrapped up, and I felt like I was being hit on the head by the theme(s).

With that said, the language (mostly in Vic's blog entries) is quite pretty and poetic.

Edit 12/11/14: You don't see how underdeveloped the theme is until you have to write a 10-page analytical essay on it. Also, be ready for some heavy ranting tomorrow.

Edit 12/12/14: The shift of focus from familial/cultural to environmental was so abrupt and awkward. A huge part of the book was also unnecessary, like the interactions between Vic and Katie, Isabella and Tewk, Isabella and her boy crush, etc. etc. Why bother incorporating it in the book if it doesn't have any significance? In the final scene, the persistent rain floods Cobalt and splits the auditorium in half, drowning the female antagonist... What? This book may only be suitable for recreational reading. It has too little depth to be analyzed.

[Georgina]

A fascinating story with different viewpoints within a family with different roots set in a town where there is the potential for an environmental tragedy.The young boy is a naturalist and through his observations of wildlife and in particular butterflies, the small things he becomes aware of hidden dangers. A good read as it balances insights into nature, pollution and a fascinating multi generational bunch of characters.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

i read it for school and thought it was boring

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Literally the most boring book I have ever read I hope Olivia Chadha dies

[Olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book made me want to fall into a sinkhole.