The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Review by Book Club member Luna Rushdi While reading the first words of the book, I was still possessed by the last words of Borges’s poem printed on the opening pages – "I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive." The effect of these words together with the vision of dusk in Kalimpong, the Judge and his orphaned granddaughter sitting on the veranda of a dilapidating house, outt the dog under the table, the cook brewing tea in an ancient kettle and Kanchanjangha looming in the horizon created a melancholy in me. I became nostalgic about memories that do not exist and places I have never visited. So the book began and I carried this feeling with me throughout. It was like haphazardly flicking through an album. one snapshot pointing towards another to slowly reveal a complete story. The book is set in the mid 1980s with snippets of the Judge’s life going back to the early 1900s during British rule in India. The author has masterfully weaved in scenes of the Nepalese insurgency during the mid 1980s with scenes from the Judges younger days. The cook’s son, Biju, acts as a window into the lives of lower class Indian people trying to survive in a western country. I liked Kiran Desai’s use of language – flowing, clear and visual. She used some big words such as parsimonious and borborygmus, however, instead of sounding out of place or odd, the words blended in with the characters and the time adding to the authenticity of the narration. The breaks after each scene provided a helpful space for the reader to absorb what has just been narrated and to prepare for the next scene. I found the book very gripping with charming descriptions and thoughtful anecdotes. The title of the book is also very appropriate as the writer brought home the message on numerous occasions that our experiences of loss as an individual and as a community is like a ripple expanding across generations, nations and cultures.