From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1)

Vikram Seth

Start date: January 1, 2016

Finish date: February 28, 2016

Discussion: Door Stops

Why we're reading this: Door stop winner for Jan/Feb 2016
[close] Door stop winner for Jan/Feb 2016

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Showing 2 of 51 topics — 1,152 comments total

Door Stops

A Suitable Boy - Parts 4-6 (Week 2: Jan 10-16)
By Sera · 24 posts · 33 views

last updated Feb 03, 2017 06:30PM

A Suitable Boy, Parts 1-3 (Week One: Jan 1-9)
By Kaion · 66 posts · 48 views

last updated Feb 02, 2017 01:01PM

showing 10 of 34 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Aug 26, 2012 El rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-centurylit-late, big-effing-books, cultural-studies-and-other, india, 1001-books-list, anarchism-revolutions, wanderlust

For Thanksgiving 2010 I spent the day finishing up Infinite Jest. For a while there I thought maybe I'd always try to finish up some sort of behemoth on Thanksgiving day, since the day to me means staying in my jammies and watching The Godfather on TV while I read. The food involved can easily be made while reading or the Boyfriend steps up and makes the yummies. But then last year I went with a a shorter book choice which I was able to read all on Thanksgiving. Boy, was that a mistake.

But then ...more

28 likes · Like · see review

Jul 05, 2015 Pamela rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, guardian-1000-read, boxall-1001-read

Don't let the size of this book put you off! It is the most wonderful, colourful, joyous, poignant and fascinating portrait of 1950s India, seen through the interwoven relationships of 4 families. These are linked by the quest of Mrs Rupa Mehra to find 'A Suitable Boy' as husband for her daughter Lata.

Seth's style is straightforward and readable, and his characters are lively and human, sometimes frustrating, but sympathetic and interesting. The complex politics of the time, clashes between Hind ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Jan 01, 2016 Sera rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, kindle, classics, literary-fiction, series, 1001-books

Holy cow! And I thought War and Peace was long. The good news is that Seth's book is almost as good as Tolstoy's. Set in 1950s post-Partition India, the story is about the political, religious and social changes that take place among various families within the country. Although the primary theme of the story is to find a suitable boy for Lata, and she has a few suitors from which to choose, the book is really a guide to life in the cities and countryside of India and how their residents are try ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 13, 2015 Wendy rated it liked it

Shelves: doorstops, 1001-books

1,474 pages is a terrifying length for a novel. I often approach a behemoth doorstop such as this thinking "could this story possibly have been told in, say, 700 pages instead?" (answer: with a good editor, probably). I also go in with the assumption that the author is going to launch into self-indulgent tangents on subjects highly interesting to them, but probably much less so to the reader. Surprise! They usually involve politics.

Vikram Seth's massive post-partition Indian opus is less tangen ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 25, 2012 Irene rated it it was amazing

At just shy of 1,500 pages, this could easily have become tedious or unwieldy. But, Seth writes with amazing skill, never taking an easily available cliché or allowing a plot thread to simply dangle. The book takes place from the spring of 1950 to the spring of 1951 in a fictional college town in India. The lives of four interwoven families are depicted during this year; Hindi and Muslim, devout and secular, elected official and unremarkable civil servant, academics and self-made business men, t ...more

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Oct 24, 2008 Nadine in California rated it it was amazing

1400 pages, yet it reads quickly and my interest never flagged. One year in the life of a large, diverse cast of engaging characters, all related to each other in one way or another. Also a good window into life in India in the 1950's. ...more

1 like · Like · see review