Anna's Reviews > A Suitable Boy

Over 1500 pages - and finally finished! I was looking forward to it in a way, but at the same time, not really, not any more. It took me a while to adjust to the multitude of characters and plots. I wondered occasionally if perhaps both the author and the editor forgot what this work was supposed to be about, but now, having spent a sizable portion of my time of the last two months among the clans of Mehras, Chatterjis, Kapoors and Khans, watching them in private and in official capacities, in politics, business and at home, in sickness and in health, in friendship, joy, love and sorrow - I feel something of a mixture of awe and abandonment.

As the title suggests it is a story of the search for a suitable boy, but perhaps in a truly Indian fashion it is much more than that. It is a saga of India, and Indian society with all its intricate detail, at the time of one mothers search for a suitable husband for her daughter. A perfect description of what it is like, is in the following words of one of the characters:

‘What is it like to write a novel?’ asked Lata.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Amit. ‘This is my first novel, and I’m in the process of finding out. At the moment it feels like a banyan tree’
‘I see,’ said Lata although she didn’t.
‘What I mean is,’ continued Amit, ‘it sprouts, and grows, and spreads and drops down branches that become trunks or intertwine with other branches. Sometimes the main trunk dies, and the structure is held up by the supporting trunks. When you go to the Botanical Garden you’ll see what I mean. It has its own life - but so do the snakes and birds and bees and lizards and termites that live in it and on it and off it. But then it is also like the Ganges in its upper, middle and lower courses - including its delta - of course.’

…. Only one thing remains - here is a banyan tree…