Rating: 
Summary: Painful, occassionally terrifying but beautiful book
Review: This book brought me to a place (geographically and politically) that I had never been to before. The author created characters that are exceedinly complex, experiencing life challenges nothing like my own. Yet I came to love these characters and was both enchanted and often horrified by their world. Watching them find a reason to get up each day feeling hopeful despite their exposure to true cruelty in the world, watching them learn to trust in a culture where trust was dangerous gave me hope that we humans are capable of many things. This book is a reminder that it is not our wealth or even health that characterizes who we are, it is the quality of our relationships.
Rating:
Summary: walking the tightrope
Review: Rohinton Mistry's masterpiece was a breeze to read and all in all, a sorrowful weave to absorb. It's a story that will stay with you, even long after you've put down the book. This is one book you want to get your hands on and have in your personal collection.
Rating:
Summary: readers may find it too heartbreaking
Review: What sense did the world make? Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair
and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He
were managing a corporation, the things Hew allowed to happen....
-A Fine Balance Suppose that you were reading a novel about the struggle of a group of people on the margins (economic, racial, religious margins) of society in Hitler's Berlin or
Stalin's Moscow, a novel written by a refugee; you wouldn't expect a particularly happy ending would you ? But somehow, even though Rohinton Mistry is a
Parsi refugee from India, who moved to Canada in 1975 when Indira Ghandi declared a State of Emergency and assumed sweeping powers, we just aren't
prepared for the moment when his narrative of life in Indira's India turns truly dark. This really says more about our political naiveté when it comes to the
Third World than it does about his plotting technique or his writing style. I suspect that for most readers, and I know it was true of me, there's a sense that
oppressive totalitarianism is really only a tragedy when it drags a developed Western nation back down into barbarism--that for underdeveloped nations, such
murderous misrule is pretty much the normal state of things. Perhaps there's even some lingering imperialistic, racist feeling that such backwards peoples are
not capable of imposing the kind of all-encompassing, soul-killing, dictatorship that we find so horrifying when they descend on a Western populace, or that
these long abused peoples, unused to freedom, can not feel its absence as profoundly as do we. Rohinton Mistry disabuses us of such notions, quite forcefully. A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city--I guess it's supposed to be Bombay--in 1975. It centers around the unlikely living arrangements of four
characters who are forced by their strained economic circumstances to share an apartment. Dina Dilal is a widower who has spent her life trying to escape her
abusive and domineering brother, in a society where independent women are, to say the least, not the norm. The apartment represents her attempt to maintain
her freedom, but she can not afford the rent on her own. She is first convinced to take in a fellow Parsi as a boarder, Maneck Kohlah, whose parents have sent
him to the city from his beloved Himalayan hill country so that he can earn a degree. Then she hires two tailors to do piece work, Hindus whom she allows to
live in the apartment : Ishvar Darji and his seventeen-year-old nephew, Omprakash. Ishvar is devoted to the task of finding his brother's son a wife. Despite their disparate backgrounds, the four develop into something like a family, as they lean on each other in the face of financial hardship, personal troubles,
and political turmoil. The lives of a cast of colorful characters--including the local Beggarmaster, a guilt ridden rent collector, a hair collector who takes his
work a tad too seriously, and even a litter of nearly feral cats--become intertwined with those of the principles, providing an unusually detailed and richly
textured portrait of a community of the urban poor. But inevitably, or seemingly inevitably, events eventually catch up to the little group and the centripetal force of their affection for one another proves no much
for the centrifugal force of a society that offers little or no economic opportunity, no real prospects for single women, discriminates against religious minorities,
and is embarked on a genuinely evil campaign of mass sterilizations of unwilling citizens. All of these forces come to bear on the apartment dwellers in ways
that range from the merely sad to the truly horrific. Considering how touching are some of the earlier scenes of the group bonding, and how hopeful are their
dreams, the transition to tragedy is definitely jarring. But what real alternative does Mistry have ? Such were, and one fears still are, the realities of life in
post-Raj India. The book is so ineffably sad that it seems only fair to caution readers that they may find it too heartbreaking. On the other hand, simply to the extent that it
brings us face to face with the brutalities of which such supposedly progressive governments as Indira Ghandi's are capable, and depicts just how intolerable life
in these societies can be, it serves an invaluable purpose. It amply demonstrates that native rule is no panacea for the ills of the Third World and helps us to
understand why refugees from these countries continue to seek a better life in America, long after their colonial masters have left them, seemingly, in control of
their own fates. In the end, it avails the oppressed naught that their oppressors may share a skin color : it is ideas--such as freedom; and equality under the law;
and opportunity--which really matter and which provide the setting in which people, such as those so lovingly portrayed here, can maintain their balance and
realize their dreams. GRADE : A-
Rating:
Summary: OPRAH........What Took You So Long?
Review: I am proud to say that I read and loved this book before Oprah announced it as her November 2001 pick. Now Oprah fans accross the country will discover the best book I've read this year!
Rating:
Summary: A life- and perspective-changing novel
Review: I finished reading this book a couple of days before Oprah announced it as the next book, and I was SO happy to hear she had chosen it! Now thousands of people will get the deeply moving experience of reading this beautiful book.
The characters in this book will get into your heart--fair warning! I still find myself wondering about them, until I remind myself that they were just characters in a novel. The simple but life-embracing philosophy of Ishvar ("life is long," he frequently says) has stayed with me as an interpretive guide for my own much-smaller troubles. Of all the messages available to me in this wonderful book, this one has meant the most. Today's despair is only that--today's despair. Life is long, and tomorrow may bring some small reason to laugh. Tomorrow may bring a new human connection that will enrich me in a surprising way. Life is long. I have been a huge fan of Salman Rushdie's writing for many years; his magical realism is so delightful, and I felt as if reading his books had given me some kind of insight into the subcontinental experience. When I opened A Fine Balance, I knew from the first paragraph that I was wading into completely different territory. Mr. Mistry does not use or need clever wordplay to draw his characters, or to illustrate his world. His beautiful and elegant language is sometimes spare, and suits his story and characters perfectly. There were phrases and passages that delighted me in their use of language, but they never pulled me out of the narrative. Is this book entertaining? Not if you want neat, tied-up Hollywood happy endings. My breath was knocked out of me several times. Things happened that were so devastating I had to put the book down. Characters suffered such insults and losses that it sometimes became more than I could bear. However, this is without a doubt one of the very best books I've ever read (and you should see my library!), and I'll give it as a gift to all my friends who read. I'll read it again, after I recover a bit from reading it the first time. A friend of mine from Pakistan gave me this book after we had argued over whether poverty exists in the United States. He said we don't really know about poverty here, and I pointed to the crushing poverty in Appalachia, among other places. We never could come to agreement. After reading this book, I believe he is right. Even in Appalachia, people have land to scrabble around on. I don't mean to minimize the horrors of poverty, wherever they exist! I was homeless for 4 years when I was in high school and frequently stole food. But A Fine Balance educated me about what truly crushing poverty might be like. Is there a grade higher than A? Higher than 100? More stars than 5? I cannot find words to express my appreciation for this wonderful book, nor words to express my gratitude to Mr. Mistry for writing it. I'm just so glad that so many more people will read it now!
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Book Of All Time
Review: I am absolutely thrilled that Oprah has selected this book. It deserves much higher than a five star rating. I have been a book worm all my life and this is my absolute favorite. I read it three years ago at the suggestion of a woman who is a native of India. From the moment I started reading it, I couldn't put the book down. The story challenges on every level. It made me rethink what I thought about class, developing nations, and what it truely means to survive. A Fine Balance also made me realize how many times I may have discounted other individuals because of differences. This is a must read. I hope readers do not decide to put the book down because of the many sad stories that will read. In the end, the book will enrich your life in a way that few books can.
Rating:
Summary: an amazing author
Review: The powerful stories touched my heart and my mind. Their effectiveness was due in large part to Mistry's language. While the characters reveal base and basic aspects of life, they are allowed to do so through magnificent phrasing.
What a joy to read.
Rating:
Summary: No happy endings here
Review: This is a book about relationships and trust. One could cloyingly say it is about the human spirit but it is simply about 4 people, living in times that make trust nearly impossible. The characters are utterly absorbing and the descriptions of life in a caste system are compelling. It is not a happy novel, it is instead deeply disturbing. But Mistry stunningly transports his reader to this place, inside the lives of these people where you smell the smells, feel their pain, and search for a way to find meaning in their lives. This book is painful, but it deserves to be read.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, thoughtful- a book for our times
Review: I cannot convey how relevant and charming I found this book. The writing is engrossing and expanding. After 9/11, it has a special resonance. The characters are well drawn and through them, we see the political events of an era in our time that have parallels with this new century. I found them to be a fine family, one that left me to reflect on the meaning of 'balance'.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fine Novel
Review: "A Fine Balance", and in all, a fine novel. If you're looking for a happy story, in which goodness is always rewarded and evil invariably is punished, then this isn't the book for you: and well done to the author for having the courage to break away from such cliches. The novel is the story of four people whose lives are drawn together briefly by circumstances, and how their lives were changed by that confluence of fates. This is the rough side of India - life as viewed and experienced by people struggling to pull themselves off the bottom of the pile, in a society beset by the turmoil caused by economic change impacting upon old social structures. It could almost be described as Indian-Dickensian, but that would do a disservice to Mistry, who only rarely descends into sentimental bathos and does not pull any punches. Corruption and brutality abound, affecting the lives of all the characters. The style of the writing is very good - easy to read and Mistry succeeded in holding my attention throughout. At times the story can be very shocking - the last 100 pages will make the average male wince at each paragraph - and at other times very amusing (Mistry has a keen wit). I thought the only downsides of the book were the unconvincing descriptions of the happy domesticity in Dina's house when the tailors become established there, and the character of "The Beggarmaster" (the thug with the heart of gold).
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