A Fine Balance in 100+ Books in 2025

Jan 03, 2013 Dolly rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, van-noy-book-club, poetry-song-music, money, 2013, india, education-school, religion-philosophy, library, books-for-living-end-of-your-life

What a miserable tale of woe. So completely depressing. Just when there's the smallest glimmer of hope, despair comes crashing down far worse than you could ever imagine. Over and over again. Sheesh.

This book offers an enlightening look at India in the 1970s, with an Epilogue set in 1984. The historical lesson is an important one to learn, but it is certainly hard to take. The tragic lives of so many people is heartbreaking, and I have little doubt that this book is fairly accurate in its portr What a miserable tale of woe. So completely depressing. Just when there's the smallest glimmer of hope, despair comes crashing down far worse than you could ever imagine. Over and over again. Sheesh.

This book offers an enlightening look at India in the 1970s, with an Epilogue set in 1984. The historical lesson is an important one to learn, but it is certainly hard to take. The tragic lives of so many people is heartbreaking, and I have little doubt that this book is fairly accurate in its portrayal of life in those times.

This book was selected as the January read for my local book club and I am glad that I read it. I cared for the characters and the plot was engaging, if horrifying. I was a bit put off by the coincidental meeting of a few of the different characters on different occasions, but otherwise, I thought it was a well-written book.

I took a break from reading the book right before a business trip. I had about 100 pages to go and I didn't want to lug such a large book with me. Besides, I had enough time to read the last bit before my club met and I wanted the book to be fresh in my mind. To a great extent, I wish I had stopped there. Those last 100 pages were so completely devastating and utterly heart-wrenching. I am glad that I read this book and I feel that it's an important story, but I just had to read something light afterward.

interesting quotes:

"Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off." (p. 48)

"There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience." (p. 56)

"We feed them milk from our breast when they are babies, but we cannot feed them good sense." (p. 134)

"Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: 'All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay.'"
"Yeats?" guessed Maneck.
The proofreader nodded, "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." (pp. 228-9)

"What an unreliable thing is time - when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair." He sighed and smiled sadly. "But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly." (p. 507)

"But what else to expect, when judgment has fled to brutish beasts, and the country's leaders have exchanged wisdom and good governance for cowardice and self-aggrandizement? Our society is decaying from the top downwards." (p. 551)

"After all, our lives are 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 we call life." (p. 554)

new words: anfractuous, buccal, caparisoned, bedizened, sortilegious, parturition, langurs, crepitating, cyclostyled, horripilate, funambulating, triturated, panegyric

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Aug 21, 2008 Windwish rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub, cultural

I read this book way before Oprah recommended it. I found myself unable to put the book down because culturally it was so informative. You can't image that people live the way they do in the book but it's true ...more

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