Reviews for A house for Mr. Biswas

The average rating for A house for Mr. Biswas based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-09-26 00:00:00 InJe Ki This one might make you pull your hair out. So if you're already bald you may need to read it wearing a wig. Also, you need a magnifying glass to find the plot. I had to take samples & send them off to a lab. Apparently there are detectable traces of story in here. But not so's you'd notice. No. The whole thing is a slow, ponderous crawl through the life of a Mr Third World Nobody who gets married by accident and appears to have four kids also by accident, without having any sex as far as I could see. Probably just pushed a specimen jar towards his wife every year or so, in between asking for the piccalilly and complaining about the declining quality of secondhand furniture. Ugh. The many pages of this book describe the awkward dealings Mr Biswas has with his in-laws and how he hates his various jobs. And pretty much nearly everything else. But. All this is made bearable by V S Naipaul's lovely fluent prose which on more than one occasion lifts the mundane details into the heights of the sublime. Ah! Ain't no must-read, but when you drag your ass to the end you get to have a brief glint of self-satisfaction. Four stars, but through really gritted teeth.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-04-13 00:00:00 Thomas Toppman A life, from start to finish. This is a book for adults--people who have struggled continually to figure out how to live their lives, people who have dealt with the opposing forces of obligation to family and the desire for independence. It's not a page-turner--and I admire that. There are satisfactions to be found in reading besides wanting to know what happens--the ever-changing balance of power in families; the slight accidents that change lives forever; the mulled-over decisions which change lives very little; the hard-won tiny victories; the slight ratcheting up and down of expectations. This is a crazy thing to say, but if I was responsible for teaching an alien what it is to be human, what it felt like to move through life as a human, I might give it this book.