A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry
number of voters: 7
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 9
lowest rating: 6.5
average rating: 7.7
percentage of readers who were disappointed in some way or another with the ending: 100
NOTE: All quotes in this recap are from the book.
*****
“Birth and death—what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it’s freakish, let’s face it.”
Part history. Part fiction. All epic.
Set in India during “The Emergency,” A Fine Balance follows four characters on a roller coaster existence of day-to-day survival. It is dark and funny and moving and maddening. “After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents—a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”
Rohinton Mistry pieces together a quilt of characters (both major and minor) and events (both national and miniscule) that is both beautifully rich and tragically threadbare. The end result is that “the whole quilt is much more important than any single square.”
The main characters are intriguing, if not always likable, each one struggling to survive. “You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.” Although it could be argued that in the end the author makes his opinion known as to which wins out.
A Fine Balance is not for everyone. It is long, slow in places, at times frustrating, and often infuriating. But for the patient reader, this epic tale of a country gone mad is a truly rewarding experience. “Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”
