Arah-Lynda's Reviews > A Suitable Boy

I finished Vikram Seth’s tome A Suitable Boy this Sunday morning while enjoying my coffee and a white chocolate, coconut Christmas cookie that my daughter had baked just last night. All right, all right, I confess it was actually two white chocolate, coconut Christmas cookies. But who can blame me really. They were so good. Not too sweet, she had gone ahead and reduced the suggested amount of sugar, resulting in a perfect blend of sweet with just a hint of salt and a nice moist and chewy texture. And just the right size, one is not enough but two, hmmmmmm just right. Yum yum.


I wish I could say that this book also displayed just the right balance. Set in the early 1950’s in a newly independent India, A Suitable Boy focuses on the lives of four large families, connected by marriage or friendship, though most notably that of Lata Mehra, whose mother Mrs. Rupa Mehra, is intent on conducting an agonizing (hers) search, that pulls in all members of her immediate and extended family, to find a suitable husband for Lata.

The story immerses you into the daily details of these families’ lives and indeed of India at that time and place. No stone is left unturned and no player too insignificant to escape the authors unquestionable skill in drawing rich characterizations and beautifully imagined settings. Through these people the reader is swept into a multiethnic society during an unsettling time of religious fervour and political unrest. It is all here: love, beauty, squalor, hatred, the caste system, prejudice, appalling violence and heart stopping tenderness.

For me however there was just way too much detail. I really did not need to dive so deeply into the political manoeuvrings involved in passing a bill or the entire history of their philosophic or cultural rituals. There was so much detail, so deeply layered into the story that it detracted from, rather than enhanced my enjoyment of it. I found myself remembering John Galt’s speech way too often. I mean there is such a thing as too much icing on what is an already delicious cinnamon bun.


It is unfortunate, I believe that the editors did not cut some of that detail away, allowing the story to blossom in its own right as my daughter did with the sugar in her cookie recipe.