Alienation

When I confess that this is the first self-help book I’ve read, I’m also confessing to a minor but pointed snobbism. Sadly, I’m self-satisfied (as many snobs are), which perhaps explains my conviction that self-help books don’t help. Worse, I believe Ian Bogost’s The Small Stuff is well-meaning, reasonable and fundamentally right about how to live one’s life. The author is laudably passionate about gratification – or ‘itty-bitty fulfilment’, to borrow his phrase. Unknowingly, I was already following his self-help prescriptions – so to me they’re of no use.

Twenty years on from winning the Booker Prize with The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai returns with a vast masterpiece of a love story which has been longlisted for this year’s prize. Our two protagonists, Sonia and Sunny, come from wealthy neighbouring families in Allahabad, but both are in America when the novel begins. Sonia is in Vermont, working for the college library while finishing her studies, and Sunny is in New York, as a reporter for the Associated Press. When Sonia flees a coercive relationship after suffering depression and Sunny agrees to help a childhood friend choose a bride, they both return to India, where they encounter one another on a train from Delhi to Allahabad.