A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves #1)

As usual, we have the range of diametrically opposing reviews here on Amazon: people who loved the book, people who hated it. That simply demonstrates that different things appeal to different people. So which are you, the reader who has yet to take on this large book?

I can offer only a hint, which is this: if you love long Russian novels, with their slow development of plot and characters, and immensely detailed stories, then you will very likely fall in love with this book, as I did. I’m not a big Tolstoy fan – I find he has too little compassion for his characters – but I love Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov – a huge, sprawling novel very like this one – remains one of the half dozen books that I’d choose if I were stuck on a desert island.

By around page 6 of this book I had fallen in love with both the writing style and all the characters, and when it was finally completed I felt like I had been cut off from a family. I never wanted this book to end, and it is still one of my favorite novels, one that a couple of years ago I read aloud to my wife over several weeks (she loved it also). The comparisons of Seth with the great Russian novelists are, for me, not at all misplaced: A Suitable Boy is a major literary achievement. The writing is perfectly balanced, the narrative brilliantly constructed, and the plot is a rich, multi-dimensional story spanning long periods and painted across the broad, evocative canvas that is post-Partition India.

If you’re still in doubt about whether it’s for you, read the first 15 or 20 pages… if you find it slow or otherwise not for you, go elsewhere. But if you love the writing of those opening pages, I can pretty much guarantee that you will love the rest of this remarkable, utterly satisfying novel.

This is a long book (1500 pages), and I approached it thinking I would put it down after 100 pages or so. But to my surprise I was plunged into the world of these four families and I carried this VERY heavy book with me everywhere (including to China). Others have compared the book to Dickens, but I kept thinking of Jane Austen (who is mentioned at one point in the novel). As in Austen, the business of getting married is central to the book, and the juxtaposition of being suitable in terms of money, class, and romance is central. But A Suitable Boy is also like Austen in the sharp-eyed social satire that appears time and again. Many scenes unfold with wit and surprise. Academics, social climbing and over-sentimental mothers, effete sophisticates who have little notion of how they would get on in the world without family money yet are quick to criticize those who make their way on their own, grasping, selfish, shallow young wives — all come under Vikram Seth’s microscope. I loved this book. My wife looked at me dubiously as I brought it with me everywhere and declared she would not read such a long tome, then found that she too was carrying it everywhere because she wanted to read more and more about these fascinating families. Read it!

I started reading this story a few years ago and stopped. The family trees at the beginning and end of the book seemed to stop me. I had to keep referring to them to know who was being talked about and just gave up in confusion. Then, a couple of days ago, after reading many other stories by Vikram Seth, I looked for the book on my shelves and started it again. I love it! I am still a long ways from the end, and like others here, just want to keep on reading and reading about these families. I like how they really do seem to love each other and the family unit is so important to every one of them. I want my family to be like that all the time with occasional departures from total harmony, of course. I have always been fascinated with India, so that helps a lot. Because I purchased a used copy here on Amazon, which didn’t cost very much, I have thought about (horrors!) cutting the book into two sections so it is a more manageable weight. I have visions of myself trying to read the very heavy book in bed and then dropping off to sleep and the book falling on my nose and making it a bloody mess. No….I won’t do that. I will order
a used PAPERBACK copy to read in bed and carry with me where ever I go. I hope it won’t also be too heavy.

Readers, don’t miss the poem at the beginning of the book where the ending two lines say,
“Buy me before good sense insists
You’ll strain your purse and sprain your wrists.”
That made me chuckle and now I know what Seth is talking about!

I am pleased and slightly relieved to have finished this widely acclaimed masterwork. As an English man born and bred in the West Midlands I grew up with the vanishing ghost of Empire and the growing presence of Indian populations in my neighbourhood. Although I worked with, and was acquainted with both Hindu and Muslim people, my own background, my father stemming from South Australian stock, was largely white imperial English. I was curious about but largely ignorant of the conventions and mores of my Indian friends and colleagues.

This book, while casting light in areas hitherto obscure to me, served at least as much as a reminder of my depth of ignorance in so much. The author clearly comes from the upper class of Indian society, and his insights and wit are most clear in that direction. Even so, he covers the poorer classes and those at the pinnacle of the pecking order with sensitive perception which appears to authentic.

Despite the alien and now historic nature of the setting, the book dwells mostly on the eternal subjects of love, jealousy, hope, and despair which trouble the lives of all of us. In this way it fits in the canon of literature in English alongside Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens. In common with those writers the author illuminates the unfamiliar with the searchlight of the universal.

I understand that this book is one which, together with other such monumental tomes such as Proust’s great work is most often claimed to have been read by those who were unable to finish it. I’m not surprised. Certainly for me, the multiplicity of unfamiliar names made keeping track of the cast of characters difficult. I found myself needing to refresh my memory as characters who had been absent for long passages suddenly popped back into view. The distinction between Muslim and Hindu names was obscure to me though clearly obvious to those familiar with Indian society. Various Indian words, most of them foreign to me, peppered the text. I was glad of the Kindle facility to highlight words which are then displayed in the dictionary or Wikipedia. Mostly.

All in all, a great work of English literature which offers an insight into the recent history of Indian patrician society and thus into the attitudes, values, and prejudices of their contemporary descendants.

I read this when it came out, and returned to it at the start of lockdown. It’s fantastic.

It is, at its core, the story of Mrs Rupa Mehra’s hunt for a husband (a suitable boy) for her daughter, Lata.

It’s also the story of the Mehra family, the Chatterjis, the Kapoors and the Khans. It’s the story of the modern generation trying to find their way in the world, it’s the story of Hindu/Muslim tensions, of the world’s largest democracy learning how to be, a story of shoe making, of the perfect mango, of the tensions between town and country. It’s the story of India at its birth.

It’s immersive and beautiful and wise and true and funny and sad and angry and a celebration of life. It’s extraordinary. If you want something to take you out of lockdown and into a riot of sights, sounds, smells and tastes, this is the book to do it. If you don’t read it now, when will you?