I picked up A Suitable Boy with no idea what to expect. I almost put it down again immediately because it weighed roughly the same amount as the four month old baby I carried on my other arm. The only prior knowledge I had about the history of India came from Mohandas Gandhi's autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, which is set in colonial India and delivered with a very heavy ideological slant. It turned out to be well worth the effort it took to schlep A Suitable Boy home from the library.
A Suitable Boy is a novel about the clash between tradition and modernization in post-independence India. The plot follows two families, the Mehras and the Kapoors, as Mrs. Mehra searches for a suitable husband for her second daughter, Lata, a student at the fictional Brahmpur University. The families are swept up in political conflicts, interfaith friendships and romances, personal turmoil, and private and public catastrophes as India struggles to govern itself and avoid war with Pakistan. Youth reared in a world of movie theaters and automobiles must decide how to integrate their parents' beliefs, superstitions, and traditions into modern living, or whether to reject them altogether.
Seth's novel manages to be informative about historical context without becoming unbearably dry. There are a few portions where speeches, mostly about land reform and conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, tend to drag on, but many of these topics remain relevant, so the speeches will be interesting to anyone who follows current events. The characters are very human and easy to relate to, admire, and despise. Despite the large number of characters (and the intimidating family trees in the front of the book), I had no trouble remembering familial relationships.
My verdict: satisfying and still surprising after 1349 pages. I liked the ending much more than the beginning, which tended to be uselessly repetitive. A Suitable Boy was a great introduction to the history of modern India which made me want to learn more.
