Disney World Dickens in Delhi

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 20^th-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.