Rating: 
Summary: The Death of Vishnu
Review: Manil Suri is a talented and poetic writer. "The Death of Vishnu" is filled with colorful characters that will either make you laugh, cry, or angry. Vishnu is an odd-job man that is dying on the stair landing that he lives on. While he drifts in and out of life and death, he tries to decide whether he truly is a God, as his mother had once told him. Meanwhile, the tenants in the building are pulsating with life. The Asrani's and the Pathak's are families that share a kitchen, a building, and a mounting disdain for one another. The Jalal's, the Muslim family in the building, are warring against each other in a battle for faith. And, Vinod, the man upstairs, remains an enigma. The story does a good job of intertwining the lives of each. The language gets slightly cumbersome at times, and more background about Indian culture would have been ideal, although, the glossary in the back does help a great deal. It's a book worth reading, if you have the time to dedicate to it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Passage Through Bombay
Review: A delicious book. A stunning debut. Manil chooses an average apartment in an average neighborhood as a port hole into the vast Indian lower middle class. He works in the rich tapestry of Indian culture and daily lore with great efficiency for a modest book. There are no complex plots, deep thoughts or messeges. Hindu gods, slum lords, social taboos, Muslim neighbors and even the obsession with Guinness records are paraded through. To top it off, Manil Suri also delivers all this in an comedy style which is highly entertaining. I hope there is more to come.
Rating:
Summary: Captured my intrigue until the end
Review: I wish I could write a debut novel like this. Having just finished a class in Religions of India, I had little difficulty finding my way through the book and the moments where Suri slips in small tales of Hindu religious mythology. (But have no worries: Suri includes a short glossary in the back that I, unfortunately, did not discover until the end.) I enjoyed watching the way that Suri addressed the conflict of Muslims and Hindus, and the problems of modern Hindu women and their arranged marriages. My only negative comment is: the way my friend hyped this book up to me, I expected more of a parallel between characters of Hindu mythology and the characters that live in the apartment building where this novel takes place. I thought they would have a more direct relationship with Vishnu as a God, not Vishnu, the man dying on the stairs. All in all, if you are interested in witnessing the comings and goings of one building in modern Bombay, take a trip with this book. It's delightful and whimsical.
Rating:
Summary: A superb comedy of spiritual manners
Review: A superb comedy of spiritual manners set in an apartment house in Bombay. An astonishing achievement for a first novel and the best thing I've read (in the genre) since Jane Austen. I am looking forward to more from Prof. Suri. The best fiction written in English today is coming from India, and Mr Suri has provided one of the best examples to date of this new body of literature.
Rating:
Summary: Real Artistry of words and Visions (and laughs)
Review: This may be perhaps one of the best written works that I did not finish reading. The book at times is so well written, it moves along as near poetry.The characters are hilarious and
sympathetic in their way,and aspirations.Still,Vishnu,the
central character between heaven and earth,is obviously in
transition,and all his humanity is looked upon in the past tense. The story line is only loosely put together, perhaps
purposely,as if to say there is only a past and a present, forever married to each other. The book is surpisingly funny, even hiliarious, despite the desperate,chaotic lives of its heroes.I know I've missed a lot by not finishing this book, but it's a journey, You may not need to reach the end to enjoy the trip. . . .
Rating:
Summary: Really Good Novel--Strong Throughout
Review: I thought this was a great novel. Especially well-crafted, entertaining, funny, deep. I write mostly because I wanted to address a couple of points that come up in the other reviews and even in the materials publicizing the book. First, while I know that Mr. Suri considers himself, at least in some respects to be an "Indian author," I think his themes are quite universal and his characters easily accessible and easily recognized, no matter what one's cultural background. I was a bit put off from reading the book, even though I have an interest in India, by the idea that it would be especially India specific, or that either the author would take a lot of time to explain the Indian context on one hand, or the book would lose me or seem understandable for lack of explanation on the other. Again, to me Suri is writing about people and their personalities, desires, motivations, and interactions. To me this transcends the culture, although the culture is a compelling back drop. Also, I did not find in this book, for instance, a World Literature aesthete that would be at all off-putting, cumbersome, or difficult for the average US reader. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy much of the Modern World Literature. But it can be harder work for me as a reader. Second, some of the reviews seemed to think that the novel was stronger in the beginning than in the second half or that the ending, in particular, was weak and/or disappointing. I am very sorry that I read those reviews before reading the book. I found that I was prepared to be disappointed and it interferred a bit with my enjoyment to think that this great build up would not finish well. In any event, this reader thought the novel was equally strong throughout, and thought the ending was completely satisfying. I'm not sure why I did not give this novel the full five stars. It is very well-written, and manages to address deep issues while being very entertaining and hard to put down. I sense that if the tone had been heavier I would have been more inclined to give it five stars, but that I would not have enjoyed reading it as much, and I doubt that I would have gotten as much out of it. I am convinced that this is real literature.
Rating:
Summary: It¿s beautiful! I love this book so much!
Review: With just the right touch of humor, the author brings us a story of relationships between residents of an apartment building in Bombay. Vishnu, resident of the first floor landing, is dying in full view of all apartment residents. First floor apartment
residents, Mrs. Arani and Mrs. Pathak, disagree as to what to do about this situation and demand that the husbands of each decide. During this painful process, the Asrani's daughter Kavita tries to decide whether or not to elope with Salim Jalal who lives on the second floor. Arifa, Salim's mother, becomes concerned about her husband's increasingly aberrant behavior such as sleeping one night next to the dying man Vishnu.
The stories of these apartment dwellers and other related people become hopelessly and amusingly interwined as the plot develops. There is love and feuding and life and death. Within the story, Hindu mythology abounds. At the end of the story, a glossary highlights the terms unfamiliar to the Western reader. Within the story, there's the incredibly rich writing of a debut novelist with a promising literary future.
Rating:
Summary: A tapestry of Mumbai Life
Review: A beautiful book with a lot of attention to detail, it is absolutely riveting, just could not put it down. Telling the tale of a handy man Vishnu as he lay dying in the landing of the stairs of an apartment building, the book narrates his youthful vagaries with a prostitute called Padmini, his recollections of his childhood with his mother and the crush on a teenager whose home he serves, while deftly interwining the narration with the going ons in the apartment complex and a look into the lives of its inmates. Each of the characters in the book is described in such rich detail that you can literally feel them in your presence. The tapestry of characters aptly portrays the diversity of the city of Mumbai. The Jalals and Mr.Jalals' quest for enlightenment, The Pathaks who share a kitchen with the Asranis. And Kavitha daughter of the Asranis who thinks she is in love with Salim son of the Jalals, the widower Taneja trying to understand his emotions, the Cigaratewalla with his radio, the maid Ganga and the several other characters intricately woven into the story. The one disappointment though was the ending, thought it was a little weak after an absolutely brilliant run up
Rating:
Summary: Glimpse of India
Review: Suri's first novel offers up a glimpse of a day in the lives of the people surrounding Vishnu. Pettiness abounds for a time as residents determine who will do what for the dying man. Suri is talented at breathing life to her characters, her words are poetic and we will surely read more and more of this author's narratives.
Beverly J Scott author of Righteous Revenge
Rating:
Summary: Mythology and human nature
Review: "The Death of Vishnu" is the first of what the author plans to be a trilogy, an eulogy to the Hindu's trinity (Trimurti): Vishnu (guardian of the universe), Brahma (the creator), and Shiva (the destroyer). This novel is immersed in India's colors, smells, tastes, and above all Hindu mythology. The setting is a degraded three-floor apartment building in Bombay. On the first floor we have two families, the Asranis and the Pathaks whose respective females are constantly in attrition over petty issues; on the second floor we have the Muslim Jalal family, a submissive religous wife and a husband struggling to reach spiritual enlightment, and on the third level we have the lonely Mr. Vinod Taneja, a widower whose piety will allow him to transcend reality. Linking these characters is the dying figure of Vishnu, stretched on the landing, sometimes brought alive by past memories and sometimes represented as a living manifestation (avatar) of the god Vishnu. He represents the divine and human nature put together. As an extra flavor, the impact of India's film industry is present in all characters, as if the atuhor is wishing to remind the reader that fantasy, imagination, wishful thinking, all act as a sedative in coping with life's harsh reality.
The parable is clear, the different apartment floors trace the path of a human soul in its struggle to reach a higher stage through several reincarnations, starting with the selfish material oriented mind, moving into a phase of intellectual dilemmas where science and faith are in opposition, to a final stage of transcendence.
"The Death of Vishnu" is a rich kaleidoscope of India's extravagant mythology, of the complexity of human nature, of a cultural world most often unknown by westerners.
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