Naipaul, V.S. A House for Mr. Biswas. Everyman’s Library, 1995.
Reason read: Naipaul was born on August 17th so read A House for Mr. Biswas in his honor. He also died in the month of August so read in his memory as well.
The life of Mohun Biswas was very difficult to read. His only success in life is that he marries well. Nothing else goes as planned for him. From birth, Biswas was a marked man, a hapless man. The Tulsi family he marries into is influential, but brutal towards Biswas; constantly mocking and ridiculing him. Imposter syndrome follows him wherever he goes. This was billed as a tragicomedy but I found very little to laugh about in Mr. Biswas’s struggles. Every time he is on the cusp of success, something stands in his way or knocks him down. His dreams of becoming a serious journalist are dashed when no one cares about his stories unless they are sensationalized. His dreams of becoming a respected family man are wasted when even his children turn against him. The one dream he has left, to own his own house, becomes his entire life.
Line that struck me: “A country doctor charged a dollar, but illness was more expensive in this room” (p 302).
Author fact: Naipaul died in 2018. He was 86 years old.
Book trivia: A House for Mr. Biswas was Naipaul’s first novel to achieve literacy acclaim worldwide. He wrote it when he was only twenty-eight years old.
Setlist: “Roaming in the Gloaming”, “Jesus Loves Me”, “Some Sunday Morning”, and Gloria Warren’s “You Are Always in My Heart”.
Nancy said: Pearl said fiction fans shouldn’t miss A House for Mr. Biswas.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cavorting Through the Caribbean: Trinidad and Tobago” (p 52).
~*LunaSea*~ 