A Fine Balance

Exceptional novel. Rohinton Mistry did a masterful job depicting the Indian culture with its caste system that creates problems for so many, especially two of the characters he so lovingly portrays. Since there are so many reviews, I won't bother going into detail here. I can just say this is a book that I won't forget easily.

This whole book is bleak bleak bleak, so you've gotta be in the right headspace for that. That said, it wasn't until the last 150 pages or so until I started reading with a furrow in my brow, because of the horrificness of everything that has happened to Ishvar and Om. Does that make me heartless, that their previous pain registered as awful, but not painful to me personally? Until it was? I hope not. And the stories of Dina and Maneck lightened the reading experience of the pain of the other two considerably, until it didn't.

And despite that, I could not put this down toward the end? And I want to pick up more of Mistry's work?

TW for basically everything, but off the top of my head: caste violence, religious discrimination (against several different groups throughout), poverty, homelessness, physical violence, dismemberment, forced labor, sexual assault, government at war, suicide, reproductive violence