For the past couple of weeks, I have been lost in the world(s) of Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, and oh, what a wonderful feeling that is! To become so immersed in a book, so vested in the evolution of the characters, so interested in the ideas, that you lose all sense of the world around you—that is what a good book can do.
TLOSAS is a 670-page saga about two young people (and their families) of Indian descent. It takes place mostly in India, with forays in the United States and elsewhere. (Lest the idea of 670 pages makes you wince, I swear you will forget the length once you are in it).
At the core of the book is the relationship between, you guessed it, Sunny and Sonia, and the tension of whether and when they will end up together thrums throughout. Swirling around this core are ideas and discourse on race, the alienation of immigrants outside their countries of origin, the mother/son relationship, the insidiousness of generational corruption, art, books, and writing. And on love, and all its weird permutations. All this in Desai's wonderful, clear writing, which is often quite funny.
And if that's not enough, there are animals—snakes, a ghost dog, Indian birds, and bandicoots! (You may find yourself wandering around the house as I did, muttering, "Bandicoots, bandicoots…" because, well, it's fun.)
If this sounds like a rave, so be it. That's not to say there are no flaws… there are a lot of characters who can be hard to keep track of at first—I'm sure this is why a family tree is tucked into the beginning of the book. Paperclip that baby and you’ll be good to go. Sometimes, the writing can meander a tad, and sometimes the chapter transitions are abrupt. But those are very small prices to pay for such an appealing book. I was sorry to finish it.
Carin Pratt is one of the remarkably knowledgeable crew at the Norwich Bookstore—and an ardent recommender of books. Before she landed in these parts, she spent 27 years at CBS News, including two decades as the executive producer of Face the Nation.