All three of Rohinton Mistry’s novels have been shortlisted
for the Booker Prize. Never read any of
them, so a week or so of travel seemed a good opportunity to try a longish
traditional novel. A Fine Balance takes place in the India of the 1970’s, a time of
change as well as political and social strife.
I can’t help but compare it to Lahiri (alas, Mistry is not nearly as
careful a writer or as insightful into human nature, and I am looking forward
to her new book due out in September), Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy, an even longer but much more satisfying epic
about 20th-century India), and Rushdie (Midnight’s Children is much more progressive and modern when it
comes to literary technique).
A Fine Balance isn’t
in the same league as any of the above, I’m afraid. Mistry tells the story of India at that time
through four main characters. Each
character endures much pain and unhappiness as a result of the surrounding
unrest, but each is also curiously unchanged by it. The characters maintain their good nature,
pure motives, and exemplary behavior throughout. Even their thoughts remain relatively
pure. And they simply endure.
So do the animals in Disney’s The Incredible Journey, but that doesn’t make it a great
movie. And the book felt like a Disney movie after a while. Four
innocents buffeted about by larger forces. They keep getting knocked down, they get up, they plod on and smile. But they never
seem to learn much about human nature along the way, nor are their characters significantly
changed by the experience. That may be
admirable in the abstract, but it’s not particularly convincing or interesting. Experiences change people. We all have good and bad, selfish and altruistic within us.
Dickens’s Little Nell endures unimaginable pain but always
retains her purity of heart. When she finally breaks down we are heartbroken. I weep openly every time I read that death scene. Dickens
is a master at such plots. His portraits
of evil make us shudder (because we've seen such tendencies in ourselves), and they transcend the time and place of the setting. Dickens’s characters are often just props for his
political and social propaganda. And
Dickens is also a great entertainer.
Mistry doesn’t have the same agenda, nor does he have the same skills. So it all comes off as a bit
superficial. It just doesn’t seem right
that those four characters could have those experiences and not be tainted by
bitterness and disappointment. And the
portrayal of that bitterness (mixed with their better natures) would be so much
more interesting than what we actually get. One character’s demise at very end
makes us realize that he had in fact been fatally damaged, but we are not at all
prepared for that outcome. It comes from
left field and is not convincing.
While I’m glad to be reminded of the recent history of India
(it is fascinating, if disturbing), I can’t really recommend Mistry unless you’re
really just looking for some light and easy reading. And even then you could probably do
better. Laugh with Kingsley Amis,
shudder with Wilkie Collins, be embarrassed with early Philip Roth,
weep and chuckle with Dickens, snicker with Trollope. It's all good.
