Alex's Reviews > A Suitable Boy

Dynasty in India is what this book really is, for all its allusions to Victorian novels. But sure, yes, it's longer than War & Peace, ensuring its place on the Books Your Friends Didn't Finish list:

The Hawking Index according to me
- Brief History of Time
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
- Suitable Boy
- Every book published before 1940
- The Bible

And it shares with War & Peace a panoramic, many-charactered view of an entire society, against the backdrop of real events - here, the 1951 abolition of the feudal Zamindari system, and the taut relationship between Hindus and Muslims in post-colonial India, which had just divided itself in two in order to pack most of its Muslims off to Pakistan.

Vikram Seth's real love is for Jane Austen, though, and the major plot is pure Austen: whom will Lata Mehra marry? The suitors include ambitious Haresh, who reads pessimistic Hardy; the poet and Seth stand-in Amit Chatterji, who (along with Lata herself) reads Austen; and the Muslim Kabir, who is in no way suitable and does not read novels (but he does act in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night).

The other major plotline involves the growing up of Lata's brother-in-law Maan Kapoor, who has an affair with musical courtesan Saeeda Bai. These two families, the Mehras and the Kapoors, twine together throughout the book, along with the Chatterjis and the Muslim Khans. It can get confusing. Here are the major characters:

MEHRAS (Rupa & dead husband)
Arun (business douche) -> Meenakshi Chatterji
   daughter Aparna
Varun (milquetoast)
Savita -> Pran Kapoor
Lata

KAPOORS (Mahesh and Mrs.)
Pran (professor) -> Savita Mehra
Maan (Saeeda Bai, best friends with Firoz Khan)
Veena -> Kedarnath Tandon the shoe guy
   son Bhaskar is good at math

KHANS (Nawab Sahib of Baitar)
Begun Abida Khan, sister-in-law politician
Zainab (daughter)
Imtiaz
Firoz (into Tasneem, Saeeda Bai's younger sister; best friends with Maan Kapoor)

CHATTERJIS (Justice & Mrs.)
Amit - poet
Meenakshi (a shitty person) -> Arun Mehra
Dipankar (the religious one)
Kakoli (silly but fun)
Tapan (nobody cares about Tapan)

EVERYONE ELSE
Saeeda Bai the singing courtesan & her sister Tasneem - (view spoiler)[not a real sister (hide spoiler)]
LN Agarwhal (incompetent politician)
Raja of Marh (asshole with gay son)
Dr. Durrani (Muslim mathematician)
Kabir Durrani (potential match for Lata)
Haresh (ambitious shoemaker, potential Lata match)
Malati (Lata's best friend)

Whew. There are of course family trees at the beginning of the book that you should bookmark. My book club has also put together a glossary that may help you. (Thanks Kaion!) And I even made a Suitable Playlist on Spotify! It contains many of the songs mentioned in the book. The "Rise traveler, the sky is bright" song is "Uth, Jaag, Musafir."

That's a lot of stuff, and this is a lot of book. It'll fully immerse you in Indian culture, which is neat. It's not difficult; it's still a soap opera, with lots of gossip and plot, and Seth writes cleanly. I found it hard to put down when I was reading it, but sometimes hard to pick up again when I wasn't. It didn't really grab me in an "I can't wait to keep reading" way until around 75%. But I really liked it. Nothing wrong with an Indian Dynasty.