Rohinton Mistry meshes the lives of four people of diverse backgrounds into a bond that lasts a lifetime. The in-depth look at a culture and a people that I knew little about has brought about an understanding that I previously lacked.

Dina Dalal, widowed and determined to make it as an independent woman in a world where women have little value, becomes the unwilling glue that supports 3 other lives. Maneck Kohlah is a student, sent by his parents from his mountain village to attend school in the city. Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash are tailors escaping the terror in their village by moving to the city to look for work. This unlikely group of people become dependent on each other out of necessity, their lives entangling to create the basis of the story.

This book is written with much sadness as well as humour and has touched a place in my heart. I look forward to reading more by this author in the future. Bravo!


I hate you Mistry   May 11, 2002
 84 out of 87 found this review helpful

I walked by the homeless in the streets while growing up in a city by the sea not unlike the one in this book. I was repulsed by their grimy faces, their missing limbs, their tattered and dirty clothes. Fearful I might catch their poor people diseases if I ventured too close, I would cross the street to avoid them. Sometimes throwing coins into their tin cups from a sterile distance-sometimes missing, and walking away praising my own charity.

Thank you Mr. Mistry for showing me the other side of the story. Thank you for putting into plain and powerful words exactly how unfair life in India is to the poor and lower castes. You have taught me more than any text book could about the injustices that daily occur in India. I hate you for your brutal honesty and for making me feel this way. Or perhaps, like you prophesized in the begining of this book, I am only blaming you for my own insensitivity.

For those of you considering reading this book, here is my warning. Mistry will seduce you with his flowing words and his gripping story. He will make you feel for his characters. He will show you a side of life that millions of people bravely struggle through. And soon you will begin to fear turning the page for fear of what might happend to the characters. And rest assured, when you turn the last page, and look for some solace, you will find none. For all is true. I have seen the Shankars and Ishvars and Oms. Go to any Indian city street corner, and you will too.


Absolutely One Of My Favorite Books   January 5, 2002
 83 out of 92 found this review helpful

This book is a masterpiece and it took me by surprise. This was a book that I bought and read only because it was our book club choice and THANK GOODNESS for that or I would've never read this terrific piece about history and foreign culture. Wonderful book....one Oprah's very best picks.
The writing is beautiful and brings new understanding about India's struggles with poverty and caste systems. The bittersweet cultures and traditions are displayed through this story using 4 main characters and involving many background characters to make this book so realistic that as a reader, I felt like I actually visited this country and knew the characters. I didn't always like some of the characters but I could feel their sadness, their fright, their loss and sorrow, and even their desire to make it.
I recommend everyone, yes everyone to pick this book up and read it. It is long. It is, at times, depressing. It is, at times, cruel. And there are some scenes written about that are rather crude. But all of this is needed to tell the story of India during the 70s and the changes it was going through as well as the corrupt government. Here's a book to make an American feel the privileges our country gives us, or any truely free country.
This is a book that would be great for seniors in high school to read eventhough there are some explicit and dramatic scenes written about that don't paint a very pretty picture.
And the author's writing is tremendous. Flowing with the book's activities put together in a way that makes the reader very anxious to keep reading. The use of some Indian words did slow the reading a bit for me but the story would not have felt so authentic or have such an impact without them.
This is a gem of a book. A true "travel-read" into another time and culture. It has opened my eyes to a different time and place in history and I'm very thankful it was a book club choice and that I read this book. Highly, highly recommended.


ONE OF THE BEST INDIAN NOVELS OF ALL TIME.   January 19, 2004
 30 out of 31 found this review helpful

You know you've read an epic novel when its 5th line had you sucked hook line and sinker. This 2-time "just missed Pulitzer" masterpiece from RM was stuck in my hands until I had it smacked down to the very last word. Immaculate piece of literature, this, you'll be an instant RM convert.

Although it's named "A Fine Balance", this novella is one of those rare gems that simply blow you out of the bubble in which you lead your life -- impervious to the extremeties around you. I found myself almost living in the world of our 4 protagonists as they go go from bouquets to brickbats. Mistry's fluent and witty language only eggs you on, I found myself amused and chuckling at many points in the book, and hard as it is to admit, I even had my eyes welled up on more occasions than I can remember.

Our protagonists are simple people, mind you. A couple of tailors, a young woman who makes her life sewing, her brother who makes it in "business". The idiosynchrasies of each character, their daily peccadiloes, the minute lens with which we are exposed to their smallest emotions, joys and fears -- as a peak into the ordinary Indian life, I simply cannot imagine a more accurate or grittier novel in recent memory.

India is indeed a country where the sinister contours of social strata (the caste system, to be specific) often seem clumsy, ominous or just plain grotesque, where deep ideological divisions feed into and exacerbate ordinary social mores. Even external dangers play themselves out domestically. A Fine Balance brims with such clear-eyed, tragicomic, Dickens-like observations of the Indian fabric.

Ingenious, wholesome, and deeply moving. Not just for Indians or people interested in India, this novel is a delight to read for ANYONE even mildly interested in literature. Highly, highly recommended!


A masterpiece   December 13, 2001
 29 out of 31 found this review helpful

It was with some trepidation that I read this book, as I have frequently found Indian novels to be very heavy going and full of doom and gloom, but it was recommended by someone with very good taste, and I thought I'd take the plunge. I am very glad I did - it is the finest novel of the Indian sub-continent that I have encountered.

The lives of the main characters are certainly not easy, so I guess I must confess that there is a fair share of the aforementioned doom and gloom. But our heroes are so well drawn, so fully rounded and so full of adventure and thirst for whatever life throws at them (and it throws plenty), that you get completely sucked into the complexities of their existences.

Rohinton Mistry is a fine, talented writer. The prose flows easily, and India in all of its richness and dire poverty is there before you. It is quite an experience, not always a comfortable one, sometimes very entertaining, and all in all one I thoroughly recommend.