Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This book captures pain and suffering that an American public is not often exposed to. It is wonderful, rich and true. I am a fan.
Rating:
Summary: My choice for the library
Review: I was recently asked to choose my 'favorite' book to display at the Gettysburg College library. As you could imagine, naming a single representative piece of literature above all others seemed next to impossible. I chose Mistry's novel, based on the fact that two years later, I still think about it more often than any other single piece of writing. The human elements of friendship, forgiveness, hope, and despair are layered in a story that reminded me as a comfortable American how quickly a society can confuse cruelty and compassion through a few small perturbations.
Rating: 
Summary: Intensly rich and emotionally shocking
Review: This book reads like a tapastry woven with rich, colorful and textured threads.
It is a story of five different people who come together due to circumstances of living and survival and how they create a almost joyful sense of family in spite of outside forces. The fine balance that they work so hard to maintained slowly but viciously frays away until there is nothing left but resigned misery and nostalgic memories.The ending shocked me with its morbid and dispair. This book does not read like a fairy tale. You may not like what you read but you will never forget it.
Superbly written
Rating: 
Summary: A not so fine balance.
Review: As much as I really wanted to hate this book, in the end I found it very moving and I felt a great loss when I finished reading it. The book is well written and I found myself being swept along in an incredible journey. For this alone, I would give the book a 4 or 5 star rating. In fairness however, I must take issue with the magnitude of suffering and loss that occurs to the characters. Tragic events occur with such frequency that the story often becomes simply unbeliveable. With so much tragedy, I found myself wondering to what the 'Balance' in the books title actually refers.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, relentlessly bleak
Review: Mistry has created a beautiful, sweeping portrait of India in 1975. The roles assigned to people as a consequence of their caste, religion, class and gender are explored and detailed through sympathetic portraits of four main protagonists and a City full of supporting characters. The savagery and cruelty to which the characters are exposed is detailed in exquisite detail. And, while one appreciates this insight into the reality of the caste system and the arbitrary injustices of the "Emergency" over which Indira Ghandi presided, there comes a time when misery piled upon misery becomes just too much and a point comes where the exaggerated tragedy becomes almost comical. As Oscar Wilde said, "one must have a heart of stone to read of the death of Little Nell without laughing," and in the frenetic final chapters, when Mistry constructs an ever-higher edifice of suffering for his characters, this threshold begins to be reached. However, such is the skill with which the characters are rendered and such is our empathy for them, our feelings for them and our understanding of them after the journey we have traveled with them by the book's end, even the almost absurd torment he visits on his characters cannot fail to have an impact.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Written, Horribly Depressing
Review: Read this book if you believe that great literature must be depressing. Rohinton Mistry, as others here have pointed out, is certainly a capable author. However I personally do not subscribe to the literary snob ideal that great literature must be a study in the misery of human despair. That is a theme accomplished with vigor in this novel. What Schidler's List is to theater, A Fine Balance is to literature; an informative piece on a period of terrible human tragedy and it is equally morbid and depressing. With each horrible misfortune suffered by each of the characters you will find yourself reading onward in hope of some resolution but you will be disappointed, there is none. Mistry's character Maneck often laments that everything ends badly. Regarding this novel, he is right. Don't waste your time finding out how.
Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking & well written, but I personally hated it.
Review: There are 3 kinds of people in this world: Optimists, pessimists, and those who determine whether the glass is empty or full depending on the glass. Optimists won't make it past the first 50 pages of this book, pessimists will appreciate this book (I'll recommend it to my mom), and the rest will think "Wow, well made glass, but how very ugly!" The book really was well written, incredibly detailed, and rich in description. I understand that the author was trying to convey the despair, I know he was trying to get us to feel the impossibilities that the people of India faced during that time. The author, unfortunately, did his job far too well. I found myself starting every chapter thinking "What terrible thing is going to happen next..." Finishing the book became arduous task. It could not have demonstrated better the hopelessness of the lives the main characters led. Points to Mr. Mistry, for making me feel the misery he was trying express. However, I'd rather chew my left arm off than read another book like this. *Notes: 3 stars for being well written, I simply hated the bleak picture. I don't do plot summaries, if you need one, read the inside cover of the book or a different review.
Rating:
Summary: Caste is beautiful but caste society is ugly
Review: This Indian novel is a masterpiece. It is first of all a picaresque novel about India, Indian society and Indira Gandhi's political power when she was the Prime Minister. As such it gives us a description of this society over a thirty years' period of time. It shows the formidable alienating caste system in which some are rejected from society as if they were animals, reduced to living on the crumbs the other upper castes condescend to give them or let them have directly from the mud of the path. Torture, harrassing, mutilations, castrations, pure executions, vengeance against any possible change : the untouchables are pariahs in their society and all members of the upper castes can do what they want with them and to them, and they are beyond the reach of justice of any other institution, especially because the government uses the upper castes to impose their will and power.
Yet we are presented with the life adventures of several people from various castes, from various religions and their relations in this Indian society that cannot live without ordering in a way or another some massacres of one particular type of people every so often to pacify the social climate and to alleviate social problems or conflicts with the old scapegoat strategy. Now the Muslims, then the Sikhs, then any other group of people, and always the untouchables as the permanent scapegoats. But it can also encourage all kinds of superstitions against witches among others, all kinds of religious narrow-mindedness, all kinds of bigotry on any subject.
But our characters go beyond this bigotry and try to survive and implement their free enterprising will and desire in this society. They can succeed for a while, with the help of a beggarmaster, provided they pay a regular fee to get this protection. But in the end the beggarmaster dies, the protection disappears and the uppercaste ruffians catch up on the running away untouchables and every thing falls into the pit of an unimaginable horror : one goes back to her rich brother but becomes his housemaid and turns blind ; her two tailors become mutilated perambulating bodies that are reduced to turning beggars ; the last one, the student who is from a well-off family and has had the chance to study enough to get a technical degree is finally pushed into suicide when he discovers the fate of all his ex-friends. There is no redemption at all for this society and for these characters. There is only destruction and final vaporization in this society that may only tolerate them as marginal ghosts on the fringes of normal life. Any attempt at being free entreprising beings in this society is paid with the unavoidable and total perdition : and yet their souls do survive even if it leads to suicide, as a sign of recapturing the beauty of old times and of old feelings and emotions.
This enduring story should make us think about the great failure of progress : no one can stop it, slow it down, but it will always be captured by the ambitious politicians or capitalists who will understand it justifies their violence and it can bring them hefty benefits and profits, even if they have to break and throw away many eggs to make this progressive omelette.
It is a haunting novel that has the total right to possess us into the most drastic and dark vision of humanity and its road to a better - if better it is - society. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan
Rating:
Summary: A Book of a few fake Mishaps along with many true ones
Review: True ones being those that happened to poor people because of the politicians in India. Fake ones are those which happen at the end of the story in just 50 pages out of the lot of 600 pages or so.
The author seemed to be in a hurry to end the story in the most depressing note than what he had achieved all throughout the book. "A Fine Balance" seemed to be true only for Dina Dalal. The author could not steer the character "Om" to do what I would have expected him to do with his "strong-headedness". I could not understand Maneck's act, it did not match with the circumstances and the plans he had made for himself. I understand Ishvar's fate, because he would not have left the side of his nephew. The characters RajaRam, Monkey-man, Shankar, BeggarMaster seemed to be dragged into the story just to depict the Indianness of their surroundings(during those years, not now). Yes, the book is a good read about India during the years of 1975 - 1985, but is not a good read if you want to know India in 2002.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome Book
Review: Rohinton Mistry blew me away with this book. His characters seem to cry, laugh, bleed and sing from the pages like a fresh portrait dripping paint. Mistry weaves story of India and the Indian people that is exotic and fascinating, yet so universal that I sometimes forget the action is taking place half a world away. With this book, I believe Rohinton Mistry was taking a stab at writing the 'great Indian novel'. Although this is one of the best works of fiction published in recent times, it will be up to the Indian reading public to decide if this book becomes the Indian CATCHER IN THE RYE or GREAT GATSBY.
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