Beverly's Reviews > A Suitable Boy

India has fascinated me ever since I saw the television adaptation of Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet called The Jewel in the Crown for tv. A Suitable boy takes place in the early 1950s just as India is grappling with her independence from Britain. There is a great deal of history here about Nehru's Congress Party and the Zamindari Act which took land from rich feudal owners and redistributed it to the workers who had lived and worked on it all their lives.
It sounds dry, but is explained well through the story of 4 interconnected, middle class families along with their social mores and religious values, Hindu and Moslem. My favorite character and the main character is Lata. the lovely, college-attending, youngest daughter of the Mehras family. Essentially it is the search for a mate for her and describes 3 young men who may be the one.