A House for Mr. Biswas

Rating:
Summary: an imaginative novel, but contaminated with too much detail
Review: On the whole, I would consider this novel a pretty enthraling depiction of the Indian diaspora. Naipul offers a refreshing change from the typical "american dream" genre of novels that have arisen in the last decade...but to do so over 600 pages..PUHLEASE..people must realize we have other books to read and other finals to study for

Rating:
Summary: A blighted life that gives us a wider perspective.
Review: In splendid prose V. S. Naipaul tells the story of a man's life in a place where few readers have been and among people few have seen. Mr. Biswas is born in Trinidad to descendants of Indian immigrants. Few readers, too, have felt all of the influences on his life: a fatherless childhood, poverty, dependence upon his mother's relatives, little schooling, a loveless marriage, and, most lasting, dependence upon his wife's family. Under these influences, he is carried along like flotsam, shaped and propelled by the results of his thoughtless actions and trusting nature. In a society of small scope, and considering the influences on his life, the odds against his finding a niche in society suited to his temperament and intellect are overwhelming. To the delight of literary people Mr. Biswas' incessant reading allows him to beat the odds, but in keeping with the absurdity of his life, the most significant reading was of newspapers serving as wallpaper in the room where he was having a nervous breakdown. His employment, while it can keep him sane, cannot alter his circumstances. He can only struggle against the entrapment, aware but impotent. This is a story of that awareness, and reading it improves our own.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I have ever read
Review: Reading A House for Mr Biswas for the first time some years ago was a tremendous experience for me. In the story of Mohun Biswas -- particularly in the story of his muddled attempts to realize his aspirations -- I could see, with sometimes painful clarity, aspects of my own life and my own emotions. I could see also images of things that I knew of my father's life; and I was particularly moved when I learned later that Biswas was based loosely on the life of Naipaul's father.In Mohun Biswas, Naipaul has constructed a character, while not heroic nor particularly admirable, who embodies the struggles and desires and self-doubts that a lot of us (non-heroic and non-admirable) people experience. And Naipual has brought to his study of Biswas (and by extension to his consideration of his father's life) an extraordinary insight, one that is compassionate yet clear-sighted. I felt, after reading Biswas, that I understood myself better, more clearly, than before. No other novel I have ever read has given me this feeling to quite this extent. I would not hesitate to rank A House for Mr Biswas as the equal of the best nineteenth-century novels.

Rating:
Summary: Not exactly a comedy but...
Review: Naipaul has crafted a fine novel. Having said that, however, I would then say that I didn't find it funny or endearing, which is how it was represented to me. The story is more pathetic than inspiring. Mr. Biswas leads a callow and unfulfilled life, which is primarily his fault. There is no deep psychological introspection like Dostoyevsky or Dickens. The only character whose psyche we delve into is Mr. Biswas, and to be perfectly honest, his is not a psyche I would like to spend six hundred pages delving into again. I did not enjoy his character and he was not emotionally or intellectually articulated enough to have a love/hate relationship with. A selfish and cruel person, like an immature and careless child, he never grows up or gains our respect. The remaining characters' actions are left for us to interpret, adding an enigmatic quality. I floated through the story trying to attach myself, but how could I when Mr. Biswas never does. The descriptions of Trinidad and his society are beautifully written. If you are interested in a portrait of the life I can't recommend a better novel.

Rating:
Summary: Craftmanship
Review: A master at work, certainly the best novel I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: A superb novel
Review: Certainly one of the greatest novels I have ever read! Stands in the same league as the best of Dostovesky, Dickens, or any other master. A MUST READ.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Biswas Kicks
Review: I am 13 years old and my father (an English professor) gave Mr.Biswas to me and told me to read it about a month ago. I got through it and have to say that it was the best book I have ever read in the 8 or so years that I have been reading.

*BUY MR BISWAS*

Rating:
Summary: A House for Mr. Biswas, Naipaul's Classic
Review: A House for Mr. Biswas. must be among Naipaul's most personal novels, even though he never does get on a first name basis with Mr. Biswas: perhaps his way of maintaining a certain distance through irony and humor. The story is a familiar one: the struggle with family and tradition, with circumstances of time and place, with ambitions disappointed. In the introduction to the Penguin edition, Ian Buruma connects Naipaul's "fastidious [observation] of [the] details in other people's lives" to rage over colonial slovenliness and lack of pride. "What might appear as a trivial detail...to many, means much to Naipaul," he says. "It separates the world of doers and makers from a passive world of second-hand and second-best." Perhaps so, but I think Naipaul's preoccupation with detail in this book has purposes both subtler and more obvious than that (Buruma's point is probably correct, but insufficient). The obvious purpose is simply the practice of his vocation, as he calls it. Naipaul is a consummate craftsman of words. With sentences and phrases he creates images that sometimes seem more immediate, more comprehensible, more real even, than experience itself (I do not think this is an exaggeration). He has a way of capturing at a glance nuances of ourselves that in our haste we often miss, or perhaps avoid. Simple details such as these are the stuff of life, and they are what animate Naipaul's prose. In his hands, no detail seems trivial. But details can be overwhelming, like watching a horse race through some fantastic microscope or magnifying glass. The exuberant rush of details in this book left me feeling breathless, even a little claustrophobic, sometimes even...."Trapped!" Just as Mr. Biswas is trapped by custom and circumstance, so the reader becomes enthralled in Naipaul's colorful skein of rich detail. It is his way, I believe, of making us feel -- not merely comprehend, but feel -- the intimate, myopic, undifferentiated, yet strangely beautiful world of Mr. Biswas and the Tulsis. Through Naipaul's way of using detail, we, too, feel trapped, trapped inside their skins. Part of Naipaul's genius, of course, is that he can do all of this and still help us, through skillful adjustment of the focus, to tell the forest from the trees. A lesser writer's prose might congeal into a blur. It is against this feeling, this visceral sense of claustrophobia and constrictedness, I think, that Mr. Biswas rebels, and the struggle is mainly within himself (not with the Tulsis). This is the struggle of self-expression everywhere, but brought into sharp relief by the desolate colonial setting where "ambition runs into the sand" (Buruma). Buruma points out that "Mr. Biswas...is not a wholly admirable character." Just so: none of us is wholly admirable. But Naipaul's characters (admittedly, I have more Naipaul to go) always seem authentic, never too good (or too bad, or too anything) to be true. And he achieves this, I believe, precisely through masterly attention to detail: physical, emotional (psychological, if you want), spiritual, and when he can, historical detail. There were certain things that struck me. Often I got the impression of the Biswas children, those "alien growths," as an unhappy, isolated bunch (only Tarzan, the dog, ever seems to get a hug). Mr. Biswas' relationship with Shama seemed stranger yet. "You had nothing to do with it," she says to him while pregnant with Myna. The remark is false, intended only as an insult, but in a certain sense, the reader might just as well take it literally: all of Mr. Biswas' children seem to get born as if by magic. This book, so often very funny, is also very sad

Rating:
Summary: A mesmerizing, comic tale of post-colonial Mr Biswas.
Review: V. S. Naipaul' A House for Mr. Biswas is an exotic novel. He writes about Indians in Trinidad; his acute observations and fantastic skill at capturing each element of human life and emotion makes this novel endearing, lasting, rich, eternal. Having grown up with a desire to write myself, I find this novel as a beautiful piece that not only tells the story of Mr Biswas, but also should be read as a brilliant piece of work emerging from a writer's struggle and strife to define his childhood, the world he has grown up in, and the world he will always associate with his past.

The novel eventhough set in Trinidad captures essential elements of Indian classes struggling to live with hopes and dreams stiffled by the plain lack of money, labor or talent required to achieve them. The novel is brilliant in parts as well the whole: in parts where he describes the "sons and daddies" outside the examination center, where he describes the complex, contrived relationship between people; where he writes about the relationship between father and son; where he captures the jealousies, envies, anger, trust, hopelessness of family members; where he invokes imagery about festivities, death ceremony, birth. I could go on and on, for having lived in a society teeming with such instances, I was amazed with the ease and ability Naipaul has written about these.

The novel is witty, has comic relief, sarcasm, has bursts of sentimentality that arises due to strain between close relations, and is full of vivid colors, flavors, smells, images, sounds and characters of a strange world. I have always come across articles talking about Naipaul's distaste for India, for his acerbic wit, describing him as a controversial person full of scathing remarks. But after reading this book, I see myself saluting this man for writing such a frank, honest, culturally rich and emotionally correct novel. Our country and culture allows for existence for very complex characters, rooted in true or false beliefs, nurtured by social and historial chaos and Naipaul looks around and starts telling the tale with a vision of someone who has suffered and yet succeeded by coming out of this miasma. He describes the victims, and he also shows the way by which the victims can save themselves.

This is also a story about the desire to own, to possess a place that you can call your own. This is a story about how several dreams of the parents doused in the daily struggles of existence are later realized through their sons and daughters. This is a story of disorder, and of the underlying order. This is the story about characters and families, that like the House Mr Biswas eventually has for himself, present bright facades and paints outside, and internally struggle to stay up, together, useful and integrated, relying on each other. It indeed is a superb piece of literature!!

Rating:
Summary: Naipaul's Best!
Review: Having read half a dozen of Naipaul's books I can confidently say that this one is my favorite of them all. Biswas is one of Naipaul's typical main characters that serve as narrator for many of his other books. Biswas is arrogant, repulsive, and abrasive. But Naipaul's magic is that he makes the reader want to follow this curmudgeon through the decades of his life and through the more than 500 pages of the book. By arousing sympathy in the detestable figure the author demonstrates his brilliance. For a long book it reads pretty fast, and unlike many other books of its length it doesn't ever really lag, which is an amazing feat in my opinion. For those who love a good story that never quits, this is a great book to pick up.