Product Description

Anita Desai's new book, hailed as "unsparing, yet tender and funny,"* brilliantly confirms her place among today's foremost Indian writers. FASTING, FEASTING takes on Desai's greatest theme: the intricate, delicate web of family conflict. It tells the moving story of Uma, the plain older daughter of an Indian family, tied to the household of her childhood and tending to her parents' every extravagant demand, and of her younger brother, Arun, across the world in Massachusetts, bewildered by his new life in college and the suburbs, where he lives with the Patton family. Published in Britain to rave reviews, FASTING, FEASTING is "rich in the sensuous atmosphere, elegiac pathos, and bleak comedy at which the author excels" (The Spectator). From the overpowering warmth of Indian culture to the cool center of the American family, it captures the physical -- and emotional -- fasting and feasting that define two distinct cultures. *(Times Literary Supplement)

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44822 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

Amazon.com Review
Anita Desai has long proved herself one of the most accomplished and admired chroniclers of middle-class India. Her 1999 novel, Fasting, Feasting, is the tale of plain and lumpish Uma and the cherished, late-born Arun, daughter and son of strict and conventional parents. So united are her parents in Uma's mind that she conflates their names. "MamaPapa themselves rarely spoke of a time when they were not one. The few anecdotes they related separately acquired great significance because of their rarity, their singularity." Throughout, Desai perfectly matches form and content: details are few, the focus narrow, emotions and needs given no place. Uma, as daughter and female, expects nothing; Arun, as son and male, is lost under the weight of expectation. Now in her 40s, Uma is at home. Attempts at arranged marriages having ended in humiliation and disaster, and she is at MamaPapa's beck and call, with only her collection of bracelets and old Christmas cards for consolation.

Uma flounces off, her grey hair frazzled, her myopic eyes glaring behind her spectacles, muttering under her breath. The parents, momentarily agitated upon their swing by the sudden invasion of ideas--sweets, parcel, letter, sweets--settle back to their slow, rhythmic swinging. They look out upon the shimmering heat of the afternoon as if the tray with tea, with sweets, with fritters, will materialise and come swimming out of it--to their rescue. With increasing impatience, they swing and swing.

Arun, in college in Massachusetts, is none too happily spending the summer with the Pattons in the suburbs: their refrigerator and freezer is packed with meat that no one eats, and Mrs. Patton is desperate to be a vegetarian, like Arun. But what he most wants is to be ignored, invisible. "Her words make Arun wince. Will she never learn to leave well alone? She does not seem to have his mother's well-developed instincts for survival through evasion. After a bit of pushing about slices of tomatoes and leaves of lettuce--in his time in America he has developed a hearty abhorrence for the raw foods everyone here thinks the natural diet of a vegetarian--he dares to glance at Mr. Patton."

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

From Publishers Weekly
Short-listed for the 1999 Booker Prize, Desai's stunning new novel (after Journey to Ithaca) looks gently but without sentimentality at an Indian family that, despite Western influence, is bound by Eastern traditions. As Desai's title implies, the novel is divided into two parts. At the heart of Part One, set in India, is Uma, the eldest of three children, the overprotected daughter who finds herself starved for a life. Plain, myopic and perhaps dim, Uma gives up school and marriage, finding herself in her 40s looking after her demanding if well-meaning parents. Uma's younger, prettier sister marries quickly to escape the same fate, but seems dissatisfied. Although the family is "quite capable of putting on a progressive, Westernized front," it's clear that privileges are still reserved for boys. When her brother, Arun, is born, Uma is expected to abandon her education at the convent school to take care of him. It is Arun, the ostensibly privileged son, smothered by his father's expectations, who is the focus of the second part of the novel. The summer after his freshman year at the University of Massachusetts, Arun stays with the Pattons, an only-too-recognizable American family. While Desai paints a nuanced and delicate portrait of Uma's family, here the writer broadens her brush strokes, starkly contrasting the Pattons' surfeit of food and material comforts with the domestic routine of the Indian household. Indeed, Desai is so adept at portraying Americans through Indian eyes that the Pattons remain as inscrutable to the reader as they are to Arun. But Arun himself, as he picks his way through a minefield of puzzling American customs, becomes a more sympathetic character, and his final act in the novel suggests both how far he has come and how much he has lost. Although Desai takes a risk in shifting from the endearing Uma to Arun, she has much to say in this graceful, supple novel about the inability of the families in either culture to nurture their children. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Here, Booker Prize finalist Desai (writing, MIT) presents a cultural comparision of two cultures and two siblings. Uma, the eldest daughter of an Indian family, has returned to her childhood home after a failed marriage and is destined to serve as the caretaker for her elderly, cantankerous parents. Arun, the cherished and unexpected son, is studying, a world away, in America and spending the summer with the Pattons, a typical suburban family. Desai divides her narrative into two parts. The first part tells Uma's story - as her parents sabotage her every move for independence. Then, using a subtle irony, Desai moves into the second part, contrasting the sights and sounds of India with Arun's experiences in suburban America. Desai manages to present the sterotypical suburban Patton family with enough humor to make the characters real and the emotions they evoke believable. Recommended for all libraries.
Dianna Moeller, OCLC/WLN Pacific Northwest Svc. Ctr., Lacey, WA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

A view of two differant cultures
The books deals with two differant cultures. First part of the book highlights the Indian traditions, cultures and mostly the place of a woman in an Indian family. Anita Desai has done an excellent job in describing the indian family to every single detail of existance. Though this type of families still exists in India, Please do not generalise this view to the whole nation. It is only a 40% of families that could relate to the book specially in states where literacy is meagre.

I must say however, there are lots of uma's in India, today, and all they need is a little encouragement with education and exposure to the outside world, and she could definitely be a very strong woman. I loved this character of Uma in the book because she was both willing to take a chance with life and at the same time dedicated to her family. And she took all that happened to her life with such grace that she did not give me a chance to cry for her. Thats her inner strength.

The second part of the book deals with the dillemma of Arun in a world which he could not have imagined. Arun, the younger brother of Uma reaches Massachusettes for his higher studies, and is totally taken aback by the lifestyles of the west.

The most beautiful part of the book is its literatrue. So well written and with accurate details, its definitely a joyful read.

A Dual and Honest View
I must say, I find some of the negative comments of others surprising since I felt this to be the most compelling of Desai's books. I think that it is deceptively simple and quite profound in parts. I have read it twice and upon the first the reading I admit that I did not think that I stumbled on to something special. But something told me I should consider it further, because like an unexpected feast, it was memorable. I felt so pulled by it that I actually decided it would be a book worth sharing with my students. They are currently in the process of reading it and enjoying her prose while considering the novel's subtle undertones. Unlike many other novels, this one does not gloss over or pretend to hide the obvious flaws and irrationality of either the Indian or American culture. Instead, it delivers a poignant, often startling, and ultimately, I think, positive view of acceptance--of one's life, of one's family and of one's culture. As far as the ending is concerned, it is wholly truthful. What aspect of life ends with any real sense of closure? Like Desai's characters, we only move and meander along, unsure of our footing at times. Her ability to draw out richness from the limited simplicity of her characters lives is quite remarkable. The more I reflect on the novel, the more I am impressed with her insight and intelligence.

Is this really Desai?
Make sure this is not the first Anita Desai novel you read. This is so unlike her previous works, it makes you wonder who the author really is. The language is different - much lighter and easier to read. Some parts of it remind you of Roy or Desai Jr.

The Fasting part is long. It's main protagonist Uma - you cannot help compare her and her context to Bim in Clear Light of Day - leads a pitiful existence peppered with everything evil that can happen with arranged marriages. Is there anything cheerful in her existence? However, there are moments in her life - her "little escapes" by associating herself with the nuns and their little art and craft projects was quite touching.

The Feasting part was interesting. It had its moments of promise - but ended rather quickly without the characters having any time to develop. Maybe this was deliberate and reflective of the lack of communication amongst the family members of the Mass suburbia - I am not sure.

The ties between the two parts are tenous and quite forced. I would almost like the Feasting part developed and nurtured a little and published on its own. Fasting is easily forgettable - its banality of themes and its treatment is quite unacceptable from a writer of Desai's ability. Read Clear Light of Day instead - which I believe is one of the best books of the century.