"The Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny" by Kiran Desai

Get ready for a rollicking, maximalist ride through End-of-20th-Century India. Kiran Desai sets her novel at a time when India’s struggle to attain the prosperity achieved in Western countries, runs squarely up against its labyrinth of societal and family morés, corruption, and its quirky, hidebound worldviews. In her handling, these forces exert their never-ending pressure against one true thing: young love. In telling this tale, she has brought out a rare gem of a novel: she dives deeply into her native country, warts and all, and lets her central characters attempt to find solutions. It’s a heroic battle, and the tome stuns us with its comprehensive treatment and its hints of where hope might be might be found, against all odds.

This is a tremendous book, a book over-brimming with ambition. Our author juggles so many objects—plot, character, theme—with unerring balance and focus, even as we (I) had to go back, more than once, several pages to figure out how we got where we are. Desai has performed a bravura, spectacular feat with Loneliness. Take up this great, Booker-shortlisted book and be enriched.

India’s ghosts conspire against good intentions and justice—what can young people do? And what can they do against a hex loosed on them by an insane, megalomaniacal sorcerer-artist? Both our protagonists hallucinate and have paranoid episodes under its power. Our eponymous young people also hesitate, misread the forces keeping them apart, and live separately even after having experienced a brief joyful intimacy. Sonia and Sonny careen and ricochet past each other, propelled every which way by family and cultural forces well beyond their control. India at that time suffers paroxysms of sectarian violence, as well. Desai sets up her prospective lovers on opposite sides: Sonny is Hindu, Sonia Muslim. This led me to wonder: is Desai trying to guide this populous, complicated country to a promised land of a peace?  

This book overflows with image, ambition, cosmopolitanism, human nature portrayed with pinpoint accuracy, and modern impulse trying to push past traditional restraint. Without doubt, it will hold your interest, both in the general storytelling sense, and in the sense of wanting the favorable outcome. It’s a tribute—its exhaustive treatment of India’s people, culture, and self-defeating inconsistencies reflect that country’s plurality and  multilayered humanity. And Desai harnesses it all brilliantly. Take this one up!