V.S. Naipaul
Paperback | Pages: 623 pages Rating: 3.81 | 17802 Users | 973 Reviews
Specify Containing Books A House for Mr Biswas
| Title | : | A House for Mr Biswas |
| Author | : | V.S. Naipaul |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 623 pages |
| Published | : | 2003 by Picador (first published 1961) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Literature. Cultural. India. Novels |
Chronicle Concering Books A House for Mr Biswas
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.
List Books In Favor Of A House for Mr Biswas
| Original Title: | A House for Mr. Biswas |
| ISBN: | 0330487191 (ISBN13: 9780330487191) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Mohun Biswas, Shama |
| Setting: | Trinidad and Tobago |
Rating Containing Books A House for Mr Biswas
Ratings: 3.81 From 17802 Users | 973 ReviewsAppraise Containing Books A House for Mr Biswas
It is a painful book to read because a lot of the things Naipaul has written about has happened in your own family or household. Or on your street. It is so brutal that you wonder how Naipaul could write about his own father and his childhood with such vicious humor that almost seems to border on cruelty. There is no magic realism. It is a book about a terribly wounded and helpless people which on the surface seems to be told bereft of any sympathy. Naipaul does not romanticize the lives of the"Biswas" is my kind of novel. Some complain that it is a bit meandering and aimless, and this is true to an extent. But what the book aims to accomplish (I suspect) is not to give the reader some nice and tidy story with a beginning, middle, and end. Naipaul is aiming for something far more epic: to describe a man's life. He literally starts with Biswas's birth and tracks this willful, sad, cocky man's life all the way to his death. The fact that Biswas's life is full of the mundane does not
Difficult to keep the clear idéees when a book is preceded such a reputation. Sublimate, inevitably sublimates. We can only find that brilliant. Respect. End of history.Can we not like what everyone likes. Can one not hate but find that only well made but not transcendantal.If not it is well written, but I have difficulty to impassioning myself for this history.
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
Is it like modern novels? No. Is it entertaining? Not that much. Boring maybe. Has it romance, thrill and 'that thing'? Not at all! Should I read it? Of course! If you are a serious fiction reader looking out for something special after your mundane, one of Naipaul's and Asia's best work is for you! Read it slowly; understand it deep; you hit the jackpot! A writer's grief becomes fodder for your thoughts.
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
Only pick this book up if you wish to slog through more than 600 pages filled with the bickering, moans and wailing of a large Indo-Trinidadian family. A Nobel Prize winner that disappoints. The plot is minimal, and the humor not to my taste. It bored me to such an extent that I have no desire to more fully explain. When a book is this boring there is just nothing to say. After 144 pages: On the back cover Newsweek and Anthony Burgess speak of the book's "comic insight and power". What are they
0 Comments:
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.