Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely wonderful book!
Review: I found this book/novel to be a great "read". The characters were all interesting & easily "grew" on me. The essence of this book was wonderful! This is my first experience reading one of Vikram Seth's books, and I must say that I was completely satisfied with my choice.
Rating:
Summary: A suitable book for all who loves good literature
Review: This book is a tour de force a Forsyth saga of India, but much more complex in its narration and its depth. Reading this is like getting another life served on a plate; As time moves in a life you meet new people, get to know them, like them even love some of them. By more or less mysterious ways some of them disappear, never to be seen again. Some people pop up at unexpected places, some moves in and out with regularity, some stays in your hearth for ever. This book is exactly like that. Fortunately it is a long book, so you do n not only get a new life, but a fairly long one also! The worst part of the book is again as in life, when the book moves on you realise that you do not know if you are going to meet your favorites again. The delight when you meet some of them again are often just as unexpected as in real life. It is a few times exceeded by the sadness of realizing that Vikram kept some of them to himself.I recently had the great joy of seeing a long TV program with Vikram Seth and his family. One of the best sides of this was that I got to meet some flesh and blood versions of some of my favorites in the book. Vikrams mother had lent some of her personality to several of the fictious characters in the book, and also several of the other relatives. It was so delightful and only raised my opinion about Seth, who in the program came out as a very sensible young man. Suitable also! It was TV on its very best. For those who liked this book as much as me I would advice them to read Arundathi Roy, Kiran Desai or V.S. Naipaul.
Rating: 
Summary: WASTE OF TIME
Review: I am sorry but after reading all those praises about this book i could not resist. I think that this book is totally crap and if u read it u might think in the end.."What the hell?" The book is long..and when i say that i mean it. It portrays 30 characters and they are all one worser than the previous one. DO NOT READ IT. I WASTED 2 and a half weeks on it and i could have read something more decent in that time. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME! MAKE BETTER USE OF IT!!
Rating:
Summary: Self-indulgent piece of rubbish
Review: By the time I'd finished with Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, I was on the verge of flinging, if one can actually fling this huge tome, across the room. I stuck with the characters from the start and ploughed through the entire length of the book only to find an anti-climax waiting for me at the end. The book does nothing to alleviate its protaganist and makes her resign to cliches. The rest of the characters in the book are neither endearing nor engaging. The family tree that's displayed in the beginning of the book is a guide map that goes awry with every addition of a new character. The whole book reads like a TV soap, resorting to melodrama and again, cliches, but minus the camp value of TV soap or the humour. Worse, Mr Seth, obviously in a moment of triumph, pens a silly, self-indulgent poem at the start of the book thanking readers for patiently sitting through A Suitable Boy and for digging into their coffers to pay for it. I'm so glad I for one didn't cough up money for this. I borrowed this from the local library and I highly recommend you do the same. Better still, forgo reading this completely. I'm sure your precious free time can be better spent doing something else.
Rating:
Summary: one of my favorite books
Review: Mr. Seth is a wonderful writer with tremendous scope and vision. If you enjoy Dickensian novels with huge casts of characters and social conscience, read this. On one level, it is a fun and enjoyable tale of one girl's mother and her search for a marriageable boy for her daughter; on another level, it is an examination of arranged marriage, independence, individualism, love, family, poverty, politics, prostitution and Indian culture. I can't recommend this enough.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Love!
Review: It's been several years already since I first read this book, and actually I just came across this review area and listing now, to see if Seth has come out with anything new (that I haven't yet read), so I decided to add a brief comment about how much I LOVED this book. It was so rich and engrossing (even if I skimmed over some of the historical/political descriptive plot parts to get more quickly back to the main love story saga plotline), I still think of this book "fondly" as one of my all time favorite favorite favorite novels, and will never forget the feeling of sadness and emptiness when I had to put the book down because it was finished! I'd never experienced that before, when I was approaching the end, I couldn't stop reading, because I wanted to know 'what happened', but at the same time, I didn't want to finish and find out, because I didn't want the book to end and have all those characters go away. It honestly felt like I had lost some friends when I'd finished that book! Like a world I had so richly and fully entered and been engrossed in had come to an end! And it was totally random that I even originally found this book! Just a listing in the paper about this author 'Vikam Seth' reading from his new novel at I think it was Kroch's and Brentano's, in Chicago, before they went out of business. Having had a former Bangladeshi boyfriend in college, and close Indian friends through him, I went to see what this was about. What a joy! And his other novel out last year about the music was enjoyable, too. (But not as deep as this!)
Rating: 
Summary: Ultimately, not worth the effort
Review: This book was a real roller coaster for me. I did become totally engrossed in it about mid way, but I'm afraid my overall impression was that the book needed a serious editing. I felt many of the female characters were very one-dimensional. In particular, I was disappointed with the last few chapters and came away from the suitable boy with a feeling of blandness.
Rating:
Summary: An endless, enchanting novel
Review: One of the most beautifully written books from the 20th century. Lata's search for the suitable boy is placed in a timeless, changing country soon after its long awaited independance. A precious gift, an unique reading.
Rating:
Summary: A True Classic
Review: This is my favourite book of all time. It took me so long to read it and by the end I couldn't believe it was over. I just wanted it to never end. This book is enriching in so many ways. The characters are so true, Vikram Seth is brilliant in putting life into words. I also learnt about India - a country I knew very little about. I now have a fascination with the country. I still regret that the book ended - absolutely brilliant. Maybe in ten years or more I will read it again and love it all over again.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly entertaining..
Review: Suitable boy is a well written book and am sure that most people would fall in love with Vikram Seth's style of writing.. I enjoy the way he can harp about any topic to excruciating detail and manage to keep up the attention of the reader..In particular, i liked the characters of Rupa mehra and Lata and found it possible to empathize with them. Also the Chatterji family was a pleasure to be with.. In short, this book has filled me with enough interest to read the other books written by Seth.
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