Author Archives: Cecilia Quirk

A SUITABLE BOY
Vikram Seth (Phoenix Fiction: UK, ISBN 978-1-8579-9088-1)

Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, famously one of the longest novels written in English, is a sprawling and eloquent tale of love, family, politics and any number of other themes, set around a fictional Indian city in the mid-1950s.  Evoking Middlemarch with its breadth of characters, its thematic investigation of momentous political events and human relationships, and its realism, A Suitable Boy is, as its blurb alleges, a love story—but as with Middlemarch this love story does not emerge as expected.  The novel, focusing on the Mehra, Kapoor, Khan and Chatterji families, contains many interlinking plot threads which draw slowly together and apart to form a magnificent story.

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To truly enjoy the work of the late David Eddings[i], the reader must be aware what they are getting themselves into.  It helps if you aren’t all that familiar with the fantasy genre, and it helps if you’re young and don’t know any better.  Before you set out, it is also ideal to choose which Eddings series you are going to start with.  It is inadvisable to attempt to read both The Tamuli and The Belgariad and their respective sequel series[ii], because the very point of the books is to be formulaic and it is quite easy to become tired of that formula, unless you pace yourself carefully.  Or unless you just don’t care.  Just not caring is another helpful quality if you wish to fully enjoy Eddings’ fiction. Continue reading