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Fasting, Feasting
by: Anita Desai

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823
EAN: 9780099289630
ISBN: 0099289636
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: June 01, 2000
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 151539

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Anita Desai, through her short stories and novels, two of which, Clear Light of Day and In Custody, have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is one of the most accomplished and admired chroniclers of middle-class India. In this, her latest novel, she tells the story of plain and lumpish Uma and the cherished, late-born Arun, daughter and son of strict and conventional parents--"MamaPapa" in Uma's mind, so united are they in their unyielding views and dictums. Desai perfectly matches form and content: details are few, the focus narrow, emotions and needs given no place. Uma, as daughter and woman, expects nothing; Arun, as son and male, is lost under the weight of expectation.

Now in her forties, Uma is at home. Attempts at arranged marriages having ended in humiliation and disaster, she is at the beck and call of MamaPapa, with only her collection of bangles and old Christmas cards for consolation.

Arun, at university in Massachusetts, is having to spend the summer with the Patton family in the suburbs: their fridge and freezer full of meat that no one eats, and Mrs Patton desperate to be a vegetarian, like Arun. But what Arun most wants is to be ignored, invisible.

The novel's counterpointing of India and America is a little forced, whereas Desai's focus on the daily round, whether in the Gangetic plain or suburban America, finely delineates the unspoken dramas in both cultures. And her characters, emblematic in their suffering. but capable of their own small rebellions, give Fasting, Feasting its sharp bite. --Ruth Petrie

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Two lifestyles to sink the spirits
Poor Uma. Drab, a dismal failure at school and stifled by the benign tyranny of MamaPapa in a close-knit traditional Indian family, she then begins to suffer from fits. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by her family to marry her off result each time in disgrace and instead she is groomed for a spinster life of domestic servitude. To add to her humiliation, marriage offers pour in for her younger sister and then her even younger brother wins a scholarship to study in the United States.
Lucky him, you would think to escape such a suffocating environment. But think again. During the summer recess when he is obliged to quit the halls of residence, he is ensconced with an American family in white picket-fence New England suburbia. Here we get ... Read More:

Rating:

- An unexpected treat
This is in part, a compelling portrait of a post- colonial Indian (Christian) family and the ruinous effect of India's rigid and feudalistic social conventions - exemplified perhaps by the custom of a bridegroom's family requiring a (usually) extortionate dowry from the bride's father. The first part of the novel follows the misfortunes of Uma, whose education is cut short by her parents when they decide that she must help to raise an unexpected first son, Arun. Uma's parents' attempts to arrange a marriage twice end in disaster and both times, the bridegroom's family swindle a dowry from Uma's father (Papa) but renege on their promises of marriage. In the first part of the novel, Uma's patriarchal; Anglophone father is an especially memorable ... Read More:

Rating:

- Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have ... Read More:

Rating:

- feasting then starving
The first part of the book is brilliant. It describes the sometimes dysfunctional aspects of the family, is engaging and enjoyable. The reader really feels for the girl. The second part feels like coming down after a hangover. First the euphoria, then the sinking feeling that things have gone wrong. I felt like giving up reading the end of the book, quite frankly. Still a good book.

Rating:

- moving
touching, moving and at times acarely realistic. The writing is controled and Desai never falls into the trap of melodrama that so many Indian authors seem unable to avoid.

Books : Fasting, Feasting