A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of A House for Mr. Biswas
Book Review: This book defines "engaging"
Summary: 5 Stars
This book defines "engaging". Though I have never been to Trinidad, I now feel like I've spent significant time there. Using very few words, Naipaul paints a portrait of what poverty in Trinidad looked like, emotionally, economically and socially. He also takes a protagonist who seems very harsh and abrasive at first, and makes him into a sympathetic character. We grow as he does. I've seldom read books that have made me able to so fully climb into the skin of a character, but this one does it. You feel his anguish, and understand his few joys. All of this is done with a very economical use of words. This is truly one of the best books I've ever read. I can't reccommend it enough.Book Review: I can't--
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite the tears, nobody ever says this thoughout this long, fascinating book. A story of generations, of family dispute and disparity, A House For Mr. Biswas is a stirring, masterful dispiction of life going on. It tells of one man's humble independance that he keeps private, not realizing how such subtle virtue affects those he comes in contact with.Never dull, always anticipatory, one of the greatest books ever written--
Book Review: A Good, Slowly Engaging Read
Summary: 4 Stars
This was VS Naipaul's break-out book, although it took a few years for it to really take off, first in England, and then everywhere else. If you're familiar with Naipaul, you will notice that it is in this book that he begins to shed the comicalness that marks his earlier works.Book Review: A portrait of rural Trinidad and one man's quiet struggle
Summary: 4 Stars
A House For Mr. Biswas, the acclaimed novel by Nobel prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul, reads like an epic and is clearly the work of an accomplished writer. Naipaul's depiction of one man's life, beginning with his birth in rural Trinidad at which time he is labeled as "cursed" by the local holy man, is an extraordinary account of an ordinary man and his struggle to provide for his family. So why does this book, filled with beautiful prose, memorable characters, and heart-wrenching events, feel like it is about 200 pages too long?Mohun Biswas, an ethnic-Indian born in Trinidad in the early 1900s, abruptly marries into the Tulsi family, and his life is from that point on dominated by his controlling mother-in-law, Mrs. Tulsi, and Seth, her brother and head of the Tulsi household. The Tulsi family provides him with housing and various jobs, ranging from managing their dry goods store to supervising their farm, but they also provide him with constant harassment and grief. Mr. Biswas longs for the day that he can own his own home, and his pursuit of this goal is the novel's persistent theme which gives it its epic quality.
A House For Mr. Biswas is, ultimately, a finely crafted novel. Naipaul's powerful, moving prose beautifully depicts the struggle, pain, and sorrow of one man's life; at the same time he paints a calm and full portrait of the ethnic-Indian experience in rural Trinidad. In many ways, this book does for rural Trinidad what John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath does for Salinas, California. It's only flaw, perhaps, is that the book's length feels somewhat forced, as if Naipaul believed that a 600-page novel would more powerfully depict his character's tragic nature than, say, a 400-page novel. The truth is that Naipaul's prose is so robust, and his characters so genuinely human, that A House For Mr. Biswas achieved the status of epic long before its final page.
Book Review: Mr. Biswas, Homeless
Summary: 4 Stars
A House for Mr. Biswas, is not so much the story of Mr. Biswas, but of the South Asian extended family - its turmoil, gossip, reunions and joys. Naipaul is unerringly accurate when describing the extended Indian family: the competition between parents over the successes of each other's children; the power of money and elder authority; the elevation of boys over girls in terms of future possibilities and education.Mr. Biswas is a heartbreaking and frustrating character. His mistakes, his ignorance, flares of tempers, and his valiant attempts at tryng to become independent from his mother's family turn him into a three dimensional character - one that you can both love and hate. His family is also well developed and complex - from his wife Shama to his young son, Anand, struggling under the weight of familial expectations.
This book didn't receive a four star review because it doesn't always capture your full attention. This is not the type of novel you spend all weekend reading. It is the type of novel that you read for a half hour to twenty minutes before going to bed, it's good but it's not enough to keep you up all night unable to put it down.
The second criticism I have of the book is its rushed ending. The novel itself has an interesting structure, in that we learn the future of Mr. Biswas, backtrack and then follow the course of his life up until his death. However, those few pages at the beginning of the novel are the same as what you receive at the end - a rushed and incomplete rendering of Mr. Biswas's dream - a house of his own. Also, the reader after several hundred pages is expected to remember the details from the beginning that Naipaul neglects to reiterate at the end. Considering the tremendous detail that accompanies the rest of the book one has to wonder if this was a planned theme: the realization of a dream isn't all that fulfilling; or was it simply laziness on the part of the author? That dilemma is for you to resolve.