The Inheritance of Loss

I finished The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, a couple of days ago for the Expanding Your Horizons Challenge, and have been having a difficult time knowing what to say about it. First off, I think it is brilliantly written- the characters were captivating, and I found it very interesting to see how all of their stories were woven around each other and tied in together. I couldn't wait to see how it all ended. That said, it was a difficult book to read... meaning that I felt rather ashamed of myself by the end of the book, ashamed of taking so much of my life for granted.

The story revolves around Sai, a young woman who is orphaned and moves in with her grandfather; the grandfather, a judge trained in England but retired from many years working in different parts of India; several neighborhood characters; and the cook's son, Biju, an illegal immigrant living in New York City. The novel moves back and forth between Sai's experience, the judge's past, and Biju's struggle to achieve the American dream. Intermingled between all of that is the violent civil unrest that is taking place in the Indian province in which Sai is living.

"But while the residents were shocked by the violence, they were also often surprised by the mundaneness of it all. Discovered the extent of perversity that the heart is capable of as they sat at home with nothing to do, and found that it was possible, faced with the stenchy of unimaginable evil, for a human being to grow bored, yawn, be absorbed by the problem of a missing sock, by neighborly irritations, to feel hunger skipping like a little mouse inside a tummy and return, once again, to the pressing matter of what to eat....There they were, the most commonplace of them, those quite mismatched with the larger-than-life questions, caught up in the mythic battles of past vs. present, justice vs. injustice- the most ordinary swept up in extraordinary hatred, because extraordinary hatred was, after all, a commonplace event."

There are certainly some light moments, but overall it is not a light book and some very serious issues are dealt with. It made me think a great deal about how good I have it as a U.S. citizen living in plenty, and how I need to pay attention and be grateful for every bit of it.