A House for Mr Biswas

Synopsis: 'A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion' - Anthony Burgess. "A House for Mr Biswas" is V.S. Naipaul's unforgettable third novel and the early masterpiece of his brilliant career. Born the 'wrong way' and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he becomes indignantly dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in an arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. Heartrending and darkly comic, "A House for Mr Biswas" has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels and this triumph of resilience, persistence and dignity masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad. 'A marvellous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels' - "Newsweek".

Review: This book is one of Susan Hill's recommendations from her book 'Howards End is on the Landing' and it's one of those books that mix comedy with pathos so although it's very funny in places there's an underlying sadness running through it. Though Mr Biswas's parents hail from India, the book is set in rural Trinidad where he is born. Mr Biswas (as he is always referred to, even as a baby) is ill fated from the start. When he is born, the midwife shouts that he is 'six-fingered and born the wrong way' and the pundit declares that 'he will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. the boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well' .. his family are warned to keep him away from trees and water and his father is forbidden to look at him for twenty one days and even then his first glance of him should be in the reflection of some coconut oil. Bad luck certainly seems to follow him around throughout his childhood and beyond. As a young adult, he goes to work for the Tulsi family at their store and is attracted to their daughter Shama, and writes her a love letter. The next thing he knows the Tulsi's have got them married off and he feels he has been tricked into it.

He spends the rest of his life trying to escape from the confines of being a Tulsi family member and all that entails. There are many generations of them living and working together and their lives are steeped in age old devotions, rituals and customs. There's a pecking order too and Mr Biswas, having only lately entered the family, is pretty low down. He'd like to be independent, he'd like a house of his own, he is constantly uprising, but most of his efforts are futile and his large and small rebellions thwarted. The story of his adult life is like one great big groundhog day, he needs a job, he needs transport, he needs somewhere to live. All of these things can and often are provided for him by the family, but he longs to break free and often does only to fail miserably and have to return with his tail between his legs (in spirit that is .. in truth he is anything but daunted and continues relentlessly with his verbal haranguing of the family.) So instead of living in a modicum of comfort he'll sometimes take himself off and attempt to have a 'house' built, only for it to turn out to be the most ramshackle old hut that ever was seen.

The person I felt most sorry for was his wife Shama constantly caught in the crossfire between her family and Mr Biswas with seemingly little affection from any of them. You don't get to know her well, you don't get to know anyone but Mr Biswas well, but you know enough to feel great sympathy for her and the children. There are small victories, Mr Biswas eventually gets a job working as a journalist for the Trinidadian 'Sentinel' (and this part of the book I loved, he writes some seriously outlandish articles and reports) and he is able to acquire a car but it's always two steps forward, two steps back. His ambition is to die in his own house and to liberate his son Anand through education (and much effort is put into this including feeding him on a 'brainfood' diet of milk and prunes.) Although you do root for him, he's not altogether likeable but still you find yourself laughing at his almost childish behaviour and insults. There's a part of you that admires him for refusing to conform but then there's another part of you that just wishes, for the sake of his family, he'd just settle for a quiet life. You want to both shake him and pat him on the back .. he really is a bizarre, frustrating character but an immensely interesting one.

It was a longer story than I thought, I have an old penguin copy and the book doesn't look very big but it turned out to have 590 closely written pages and it took me forever to plough my way through it. It didn't help either that the book started crumbling as I read it and I lost big chunks of it each time I picked it up. I enjoyed it though and want to read more by him, I was disappointed that this wasn't on the 1001, some other books by him are and I knew I'd seen it on a list .. it turned out to be Susan Hill's list of books she couldn't live without.