The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai's second book, travels back and forth between Kalimpong, a tiny Himalayan hill town, and the streets of New York City, with a few scenes rolling in England.
The story revovles around a 16 year old orphaned girl Sai, who is sent to live with her grandfather a retired judge and former civil servant, who lives in a desolate bungalow on the hills in Kalimpong. The judge has a cook, whose son Biju is an illegal immigrant in New York, who tries to make a living by doing all kinds of odd jobs. The plot oscillates between the lives of Sai, the judge and his cook with the backdrop of the Gorkhaland agitation, and Biju's struggles to build a life for himself in the States. The book is full of other Kalimpong characters most of whom are uproots living in exile. All the characters in the book seem to be struggling for something-some yearn for love while some struggle for acceptance. There is a prominent potrayal of immigrant emotions in most of the characters as they try to discover who they are and where they belong to. Desai's narrative of exotic locations and eccentric characters is colorful and heart warming.
So, why was I surprised that this book won the Booker. At times I found the narrative incoherent, as it shifted between the characters in Kalimpong and the desperation portrayed by the character in New York. Some conversations were complex and the dialogue was copious at times. A times the sentences confused me. I am not sure if it is an accepted form of prose or experimentation, where the author used odd punctuation and expressions in the middle of some sentences. Am I suggesting that the book was badly written, definitely not. Please give it a try. You might love it or it could just pass for an average book. However, it did not fulfill my expectations of a Booker winner.
