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A review by shreyapandey13
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
📚 Every once in a while you come across a book that reminds you why writing matters. When I was in the final year of pursuing my English Literature degree, a professor told us, 'The greatest, most powerful thing literature can do for you is open up your mind to alternate perspectives and generate empathy'. This book did exactly that.
🌼 If Charles Dickens wrote about India, he would have written this book. Set in the 1970s, this is a historical literary fiction that offers us a glimpse of life under the Emergency as well as the Partition. What is terrifying is that once you start reading this you'll realise, save for some details, everything else is exactly the same. Which is why this book paints a portrait of modern India itself.
🇮🇳 Modern India—rapidly growing, a chaotic giant that threatens to fall under its own weight. The book introduces us to a very colourful cast of characters from various walks of life: a Parsi widow struggling to make ends meet, two men of the cobbler caste, a beggar, a muslim tailor and his family, a poor hair collector, a lawyer turned political speech writer, a beggarmaster—and so many more. Like Dickensenian characters they have interesting stories firmly rooted in their time as they weave in and out of the story.
💛 This book made me feel so much. I rarely give out five stars, but this one truly deserved it. It's been a week since I read this book and I still can't stop thinking about it. It's one of those books where the characters become these very real people in your mind, like your friends, and suddenly when the book ends you feel like they've been ripped away from you. This also has one of my most favourite tropes of all time: 'found family'.
✨ This book is a wholesome, heart wrenching read that will make you a better, more empathetic human being. It's written with a unique literary mastery, rendering the ordinary and the mundane into something beautiful and whimsical. A must, MUST read
🌼 If Charles Dickens wrote about India, he would have written this book. Set in the 1970s, this is a historical literary fiction that offers us a glimpse of life under the Emergency as well as the Partition. What is terrifying is that once you start reading this you'll realise, save for some details, everything else is exactly the same. Which is why this book paints a portrait of modern India itself.
🇮🇳 Modern India—rapidly growing, a chaotic giant that threatens to fall under its own weight. The book introduces us to a very colourful cast of characters from various walks of life: a Parsi widow struggling to make ends meet, two men of the cobbler caste, a beggar, a muslim tailor and his family, a poor hair collector, a lawyer turned political speech writer, a beggarmaster—and so many more. Like Dickensenian characters they have interesting stories firmly rooted in their time as they weave in and out of the story.
💛 This book made me feel so much. I rarely give out five stars, but this one truly deserved it. It's been a week since I read this book and I still can't stop thinking about it. It's one of those books where the characters become these very real people in your mind, like your friends, and suddenly when the book ends you feel like they've been ripped away from you. This also has one of my most favourite tropes of all time: 'found family'.
✨ This book is a wholesome, heart wrenching read that will make you a better, more empathetic human being. It's written with a unique literary mastery, rendering the ordinary and the mundane into something beautiful and whimsical. A must, MUST read