A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul

August 5th, 2006 admin Posted in Reviews |

My friends Ashwin and Tania recommended this book and the following is from an email I wrote to them after reading the book.How goes life? Or in Mohun Biswas’s words, “How life, maan?”. I am still struggling to figure out the book. The tragi-comic look at the entire life of a man, leaves you wondering if it is a happy ending, a sad ending or the less categorizable, yet more recognizable ending. Endings as they typically are in real life, sadly abrupt in a way, never having achieved life’s true potential, yet satisfyingly complete, having achieved the one goal in his life. The beautiful and believable sense of humour, never taking life too seriously, is the only way he gets through life, which is otherwise overwhelmingly complicated, sad and painful.

When I was about a third of my way into the book, I was not sure why I was reading it. It seemed to have no tangible theme, too many characters and a primarily depressing story (if you could call it a story). It was as if the author picked up reams of paper and just wrote what came to his mind, letting the events and narrative flow which ever way they chose to. It was not until Mr. Biswas started tasting “victories” that I got hooked. Victories is a big word, for what were primarily small satisfactions in life - a small job, a good comeback, an occasional acknowledgement, an intelligent son, temporary privacy. These inconsequential satisfactions, in an intricate net of inconsequential emotions from inconsequential people in an elaborate yet equally inconsequential family define the few moments of joy in Mr. Biswas’ life. And the theme of the book seemed to emerge.

Mr. Biswas lives his short life, struggling for a sense of self and place. He is constantly being pulled down, not by an evil villain, not by a calamity of nature, not by a debilitating disease. He struggles against the real horrors of life, its inconsequential realness, its uncontrollable meandering, its invincible boredom. He fights. The fights he puts up are spirited. He loses some. He wins some. He laughs, he cries, he is elated, he is depressed, and yet he never gives in. He is a hero who fought grinding, never-ending battles which really did not win him anything, but at the same time won him the only thing he could hope for in his condition. A purpose. A goal. Something to look forward to. Something to live for. The beauty of the story and the writing is its truthfulness. It brings out the extraordinary in ordinary man’s ordinary life. One puts down the book with a sense of calm and understanding that is comparable to one you draw from a book on philosophy. “A House for Mr Biswas” is a strangely satisfying read that grows on you as you delve deeper into Mohun Biswas’s travails, and leaves you with an almost involved attachment to him, his family and his life.

V. S. Naipaul writes with a thin layer of believable humour protecting the characters and the readers from the insane helplessness of certain situations. The descriptions of the various regions of the J-shaped tiny island of Trinidad that Mr. Biswas spends his entire life in, the dialect, the social structure, the family structure and the life of a Hindu family Mr. Biswas marries into is expertly intertwined with the story. The strength of this book is the author’s ability to truthfully represent the seemingly purposeless life of a man, and yet bring out the the purpose in his life and that of every human being.