Caution: Read this book while sitting in front of a happy lamp

Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance is quite possibly the most depressing book I have ever read.  Much like the other novel I've read by him, Family Matters, it is pretty sad the whole way through, but then you get to the epilogue and realize that the rest of the book was like an episode of Full House compared to what he has in store for you in the last several pages.  That's where he ensures that you lose all hope in the future of humanity.

This is probably not a great way to introduce the book to you in a way that makes you want to read it.  And frankly, if I had known how depressing the book was before I picked it up, I am not sure I would have read it, either.  It is SUPER depressing.  It's depressing the way this winter has been depressing.  You think that you have seen enough and that someone will have mercy on you because things can't get much worse, and then you wake up and it's 20 degrees at the end of March and it's still snowing and you realize that you have worn the same eight sweaters approximately 50 times over the past six months because there are only so many clothes in your wardrobe that are warm enough to wear in sub-zero temperatures.  So you put one of those sweaters on again, and miserably go out to sweep the snow off your car so that you can drive two hours to work because ... well, what else can you do?

Rohinton Mistry is this winter.  He just does NOT give you a break.

A Fine Balance is a story that revolves around four people, mostly during the Emergency that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared in the 1970s.  Dina is a widow who has trouble making ends meet. She takes in a boarder, Maneck, who is from the rural mountains and has suffered a great deal of bullying at college.  She also hires an uncle and nephew team of tailors to work for her, Ishvar and Omprakash.  These two men are escaping caste violence in their village.  The story moves forward and backward, sharing each character's backstory and then coming back to the present day, often with side stories about other people that have smaller parts in the main action of the novel but have quite telling stories about the state of India during the Emergency.  One of the key components of the Emergency, both in real life and in the novel, was the horrific mass-sterilization campaign, during which many poor people were forced to get operations so that they could no longer have children.

In some ways, this book was similar to Behind the Beautiful Forevers because it made clear just how much of a razor blade the poor live on.  Life can be going along fairly well, and then one setback can completely ruin everything that you have worked towards.  And then, even worse than that, there is the horror of police brutality, government corruption, and forced sterilization.

Obviously, with all of this as the setting, there is not much that could happen in A Fine Balance to make it a happy book.  While Mistry's writing is lovely and his characters are drawn so well and truly come to life, these only help to shatter you even further as a reader when things go badly (and, I kid you not, everything goes badly).

So while I'm glad that I read this one due to all the acclaim it has received and due to the amount of time it has sat unread on my shelf, I don't think I'll be picking Mistry up again any time soon.  I need some time to recover!