Rating: 
Summary: Loved it.
Review: This is a beautiful book - it is funny, and sad. I found myself thinking of the characters long after I had finished the book, as if I really knew them, and really cared about them. Reading this book also made me realize how lucky I am to have a home, a job, and food on the table.
Rating:
Summary: A novel for our times
Review: Rohinton Mistry is a gifted writer. With A Fine Balance he proves he can writer about the human soul and social condition with the same love for both aspects of life. Moreover, there aren't many writers around there who can keep readers' attention for more than 600 pages. In 'A Fine Balance' there is something going on in every chapter, and from time to time, a new characters pops up, and he/she is as well developed as those who are presented at page one.In my opinion, 'Balance' is, among other things, about the social condition overcoming the human codition. Not only are the main characters struggling to survive, but they also need to fight in order not to lose their human condition, and become animals. And, believe me, in their times and place, it was not an easy thing. The book also succeeds when shows how politics interferes in everybody's lives --even in the one who are not interested in that. 'A Fine Balance' is a great book and a wonderful read. But I something weird happened to me when reading it. On one hand I wanted to read it as much as I could, all the time, on the other, once I put it down, I wasn't very excited to get back to it again, but once I got I would read 30, 40 pages in a row. This thing had never happened to me. Maybe because I was scared to find out that no matter how bad life is, it can always get worse. In the book when you think that the characters' lives are bad and there is nothing else to happen to them, think again... Mistry has written a book for our times. You may not like it, or even understand, but it is impossible to finish it and still think in the same way about life, about being a human being.
Rating: 
Summary: An epic story
Review: The first word that comes to mind in describing this novel is "epic". It certainly spans a lot of time, a lot of lives, and a lot of stories. And it does so very well. Set in India through the middle half of the 20th century, it describes an environment of corruption, poverty, and fatalism that was enlightening. The characters in this novel, for the most part, are resigned to their course in life and are passive in terms of affecting change. The novel aims for sweeping grandeur, and achieves it. This are wrapped up a little too tidily in the end, but this is definitely a worthy read.
Rating: 
Summary: Unhealthy dose of reality.
Review: Since this is my first experience with a book about India, I don't know how much of the political climate Mistry writes about is truth and how much of it is fiction. Either way, it's emotional, nearly heart-rending, and completely engrossing. If you're seeing it from strictly a stylistic point of view, this book is well written, hooks you into the hopes and dreams of very endearing characters and you read along and hope with them. The description of their lives is all-encompassing -- you know their eating, sleeping and elimination habits. You know what they smell like, you know everything about them. You are hopeful their dreams will come true. But the hope dwindles for all (reader and characters alike). The brutality of the political system and the struggles of the poor hit me so hard that I am still recovering. If Mistry's intention was to write a documentary and comment on the realities of life of the poor in India, this book was a huge success. But for a work of fiction -- I would have liked to see at least a spark of better things to come. It seemed by the end that the author was simply piling on the misfortune and couldn't stop himself. To a person who isn't familiar with the actual politics and climate of India in the fictional character's lifetime, the author lost his credibility for me only because there was way too much misery. It's dark, depressing and regardless of whether it depicts the realities of India or not, there is a point in the book where you say - ENOUGH ALREADY!!!
Rating:
Summary: An antidote to thinking everything will work out
Review: As I came closer and closer to the end of this book I read slower and slower. The four main characters, Dina, Maneck, Om and Ishvar had a hold on me and I didn't want them to let go. I wanted Dina to be happy, Om to get married, Ishvar and Dina to build on their growing friendship, and Maneck to do well in school and work. But, things don't always work out. In this book, it seems nothing works out. Four people lost at the bottom of a corrupt society and dysfunctional government didn't have a chance.
A Fine Balance reads well. It has the feel of a 19th century family novel, Tolstoy without the sermon. Get a good glass of wine (or a case), a comfortable chair, and enjoy a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Victorian narrative meets twentieth-century realism
Review: Mistry's powerful epic novel relates the story of a widow, two tailors, and a student who are thrown together and struggle to survive under an increasingly oppressive regime. Set mostly in Bombay (although the city is never named), the protagonists endure the effects of the 1975 "state of emergency" declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (likewise never named) after the nation's high court convicted her of manipulating the previous election and ordered her to vacate her position. During this period, Gandhi's son, Sanjay, coordinated and fine-tuned India's notorious corruption, razed slum dwellings with disregard for their inhabitants, and initiated an infamous program of forced sterilization. These political and social cataclysms provide the backdrop for the characters' hopes and miseries. (Readers might find it useful to know that Mistry was born, raised, and educated in Bombay and, at the age of 23, emigrated to Toronto a month after the state of emergency was declared.) The widow Dina hires Om and his uncle Ishvar to work in her home sewing piecework for export and accepts a student, Maneck, as a boarder. She learns quickly that she must balance her own well-earned privacy with her loneliness and the necessity for discipline with the need for money to pay the rent. One of Mistry's most remarkable and subtle accomplishments is the gradual conversion of the claustrophobic apartment from an uninviting place of employment and residence to a hospitable refuge from the miserable outside world. Although Mistry has an almost journalistic (yet occasionally florid) narrative style all his own, the ghosts of Dickens and Tolstoy pervade the construction of the novel. While the novel's grim realism and certain plot elements recall "Anna Karenina," Dickens's influence is perceptible in the use of melodrama and happenstance, in the details of urban bustle and squalor, and--most of all--in the supporting cast, a motley bunch of ragamuffins and brutes who transcend their own caricatures at surprising and pivotal moments. Of special note is the Beggarmaster, who manages to be simultaneously nefarious and endearing. You won't be able to decide whether you love him or hate him. Mistry has been faulted for his use of "unbelievable" coincidences as a plot device. Although the individual experiences endured by his characters are realistic enough, the argument goes, the fact that every character endures every possible travesty and seems to be always in the wrong place at the wrong time stretches plausibility. Likewise, people are constantly running into each other in a city of millions. (To a New Yorker like myself, this doesn't seem all that far-fetched.) Yet, in the guise of Mr. Valmik, Mistry himself fully confronts this charge and flaunts it as a theme for his novel. A lawyer, proofreader, and sloganeer who randomly intrudes as a calm authorial voice, Valmik comments that "our lives are but a sequence of accidents--a clanking chain of chance events." Mistry's novel intentionally violates the strict requirements of American realism; indeed, his fiction is a hybrid that seems appropriate to India: Victorian melodrama meets twentieth-century naturalism. I am surprised by the number of readers who found the book too depressing to bear. Given the poverty and strife endured by India's lower classes, what others found hopelessly gloomy seemed to me utterly honest. Certainly (by American standards especially) the fates of many of the characters are horrifying, but Mistry balances the misery with just enough humor and warmth; even at the end (with one notable exception) the human spirit perseveres. Or, to quote Mr. Valmik again, "There is always hope--hope enough to balance our despair."
Rating: 
Summary: whiney, useless
Review: i couldn't get through the first half. it was that whiney and babyish. remember, this is the guy who cried racism in the airports, when everybody knows people who fly with one way tickets get more survailence than most. it's that kind of non-thinking whining you can expect from this guy.
Rating:
Summary: A FINE READ
Review: I can't say I know much in detail about the daily lives of the average Indian, but I must say this novel does have a note of truth running throught it. Wonderfully written and easy to read, the book left me with four wonderful people left indelibly printed in my mind, along with a host of sympathetic supporting characters. The blurb on the back cover describes it as Dickensian, which it certainly is-the coincidences and sheer number of calamities that this people experience, for example. But this was a fine, rewarding novel and I look forward to reading more my Mistry.
Rating:
Summary: A stunning, mesmerizing, exceptional achievement
Review: A FINE BALANCE is a novel of epic proportions - in length and in subject and in creativity. Rohinton Mistry writes with magisterial style, weaving spells with the English language as a matrix for the languages of India, conveys with thunderous impact the incredible poverty and fragile line between living/existing/thriving in a country beseiged with political squalor and sociologic catastrophe of the extant caste system, and yet despite this cinerama canvas of 'life in India' in the mid-1970s his focus remains on the very personal lives of his four main characters - people we grow to love, identify with and fight for in this struggle for survival. Not for a moment would I suggest that this is a novel of angst or of despondency, a book that will leave you only weeeping (though there is much of that well written here). A recurring phrase that Mistry places in the mouths of nearly all of of his characters is "This is only a small obstacle." Now if that isn't the strongest hint of the faith of the downtrodden, then look to the title of this tome: A FINE BALANCE is the life search for understanding the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' and finding that goodness comes through acts of kindness and caring, acts that can step over the vast abyss of a caste system. This is a fine book, richly detailed in atmosphere and scents and tender humor and very human emotion. A brilliant book that should be read by everyone who wants to understand India and its mysteries, universal truths, and who appreciate extraordinarily rich writing. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Rating:
Summary: What did you expect?
Review: I usually like to read reviews after I read books and now I understand that is a good way to proceed. If I had based my decision to read or not read a book base on someone else's opinion I probably would have avoided this book. First of all I do not believe there is such a thing as a bad book. There are just books that you like and those that you don't. You need to have some idea of what you can expect out of a novel and you don't read all 600+ pages if you discover after the first hundred or so that this book is not getting it done for you. Cut your losses, toss the book and get another unless you are just in to pain. My god, this is a book about Mumbai,India arguably one of the filthiest and poorest cities on the face of the earth, at a turbulent time in its history, what did you expect? I have read all 3 of Mr. Mistry's novels and his collection of short stories and haven't been disappointed yet. I think that he is honest and writes from his heart about a subject that he is throughly acquainted with and loves and hates at same time.
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