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[Jen]

10. Reviews and ratings here

[Diane]

Read: 2011
Rating: 2.5 Stars

I listened to this on audio on an 18-hour drive between upstate New York and Georgia a few years ago. I remember it started out with promise and I was very excited to get into the story. Not too long into the book, the story seemed to fall apart for me and I struggled to get through it. I hung on with the hopes that it would improve, but it never did (for me). I am not saying that it is a bad book - the language was lovely and there were some interesting vignettes - it just didn't gel with me overall. Perhaps I will try to reread this in book format at a later date. Maybe I will have a different perspective.

[Book]

The Inheritance of Loss Kiran Desai
3 Stars

There were several quotes I highlighted as I was reading this and the writing is solid, however it is a bleak book that doesn't have a hopeful ending for most of the characters and the more I learnt about the characters with a few exceptions the less I liked them.

[Pip]

I give this book a solid 4 stars. I thought the writing was beautiful and so evocative. I could imagine the settings easily from what was written. A quote " Plunk, ping, piddle, drips fell into the pots and pans placed under leaks -" and a description of the stores in the market in Kalimpong such as "the antique shops with the thangkhas that grew more antique with each blast of exhaust from passing traffic" but also Desai's ability to describe, for example, Gyan getting caught up in the Gorkha demonstration and wondering about the motives of the marchers, and also his own. When I first read this book I didn't check where Kalimpong is, exactly. It is practically in Sikkim and very close to the Nepalese border. I was unaware of the Gorkha insurgency, but I have been caught up in a riot in Kathmandu, so I found it most realistic. I thought that Desai was deft in covering a lot of material in the story of a few people. Themes of immigration, displacement, identity, terrorism, economic inequality and corruption are interwoven with the stories of individual sorrow and powerlessness. And it is not without humour. It wasn't an easy read, but I think it is an important one.