A Suitable Boy

ƒ??Set in post-independence India, the novel follows for eighteen months or so four linked families in Calcutta, the province of Purva Pradesh and its capital Brahmpur, and the citiesƒ??Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknowƒ??trawled by the heroineƒ??s mother in her search for a ƒ??suitable boyƒ?ƒ?? But the greatness of the novel, its unassailable truthfulness, owes less to research than to imagination, an instinctive knowledge of the human heart ƒ?? with all its varieties of kindness and cruelty, its capacity for hurtƒ?? As with all the best books, one feels only dismay when the pages on the right of the tome start thinning out.ƒ?? ƒ??The Observer

ƒ??So vast and so amicably peopled, (A Suitable Boy) is a long, sweet, sleepless pilgrimage to life. Rich and epical, Suitable Boy is nonetheless strikingly unpretentiousƒ?? In 1,400 pages (the novel) covers India like a sun, warming a whole country in its historical raysƒ?? It is almost impossible to imagine an unswayed reader.ƒ?? ƒ??The Guardian