Rating: 
Summary: This book took my breath away.
Review: Once in a very long time you may come across a book which has the power to change the way you think. For me, "A Fine Balance" was just such a book. I read it months ago and I cannot leave it behind. As I step into the shower; turn on the tap to fill the kettle; open my well-stocked fridge and cupboards;a hundred times a day I am reminded of the book and the characters. I am horrified by how mistaken we were about Indira Ghandi. If you want a book which will hold you in its spell long after you have finished it...by all means...this is THE book.
Rating:
Summary: if you like crying
Review: read this book. i recieved this book as a going away gift from an old co worker. i CRIED ... heavy book... i hated the thickness of it, but, i couldn't put it down. it was all too familiar. the emotions ...equisite description of the human experience. i felt like i read about the character's lives every single day of THEIR lives from birth to death... its heavy. its deep. its worth the time.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly one of the best books I have ever read
Review: If you like Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Zola, Twain, Trollope, Wharton, etc., you'd like this book. If the afore authors disturb you, you'd feel the same.
I think this book will soon (and should) be a required standard of any secondary school and/or University syllabus.
I read a great deal and am pretty much cynical when authors try to tweak emotion but at the end of this book????
Additionally, if ya wanna see "real India", see Nair's movie "Salaam Bombay" (and "Monsoon Wedding").
Rating: 
Summary: Evil Does Exist....
Review: This book proves why moral relativity makes no sense. How can one claim that for some people democracy and Judeo/Christian morality is fine, but other cultures/religions have other values and so be it, because who are we to say we're right and they're wrong. The caste system, forced sterilization, the heartbreaking mutilation of children to make them into beggars, etc. described in this book are evil and this is not "just my opinion". There is one universal morality: the 7 Laws of Noah given by G-d to humanity (Believe in G-d - no idolatry; Honor G-d - no blasphemy; do not murder; do not commit adultery or incest; do not steal - which includes kidnapping; no cruelty to animals; establish courts of justice). When these principles are replaced by anything else, the world can be a miserable jungle and that's precisely what Rohinton Mistry has described in this novel.
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