Just - wow. One of the best books I have ever read! It happened to be sitting on my bookshelf, an unopened treasure, and I dusted it off because I had heard it was a book that you simply could not put down.

The setting is in 1970's India during the Emergency. There is corruption, chaos, confusion. You find yourself in horrifying slums, in the fight for a woman's independence, in the lives of beggars and thieves. And yet in the midst, you find beauty and hope.

I had to jot down some of my favorite quotes that just send chills down my spine:

"If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy - as long as one knew where to look for it."

"Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force,
it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off like a moulting snake. Losing, and losing again is the very basis of the life process, till all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence."

"There is always hope - hope enough to balance our despair. Or we would be lost."

"What an unreliable thing is time - when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour, and your hair. But in the end, time is a noose around your neck, strangling slowly."

"If you fill your face with laughing, there will be no room for crying. But that does not mean that we are not sad. But it's sitting inside here. 'He placed his hand over his heart.' In here, there is limitless room, happiness, sadness, kindness, sorrow, anger, friendship - everything fits in here."

"It was all part of living, that the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair, to embrace change."

"Life does not guarantee happiness."

"'Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes,' he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance."

This book has it all - complicated characters, historical accuracy, friendship and love, beautiful prose, extremely well balanced, and a veritable haunting ending. This book will stay with you forever, and will ultimately spoil you for your next read because I guarantee any book will pale in comparison.

The Proofreader nodded…’You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.’

Fantastic writing. 600+ pages flash by. Reminded me of Garcia Marquez but without the ‘magical realism’ and Salman Rushdie without the overtly grotesque characters.

Thought I had bought this book and two others by the author found in my stash. But they were my daughters and she told me this was one of her favourites.

Story set in India in the mid-seventies and finishing in 1984 with the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the riots that followed.

Follows four characters and a number of minor ones that cross back and forth. Whilst a sad read there are many comic moments and characters. From Monkey-man with his two trained monkeys (later replaced by children). And I imagined the character Beggarmaster as Ron Moody (Fagin) in ‘Oliver.’ Leading his troop of beggars.

I felt the book was best summarised by the character Om:

‘What a weird story…it’s got everything- tragedy, romance, violence and a suspenseful unresolved ending.’

I was introduced to this book by Lisa, a very good literary friend, who told me about Granta's review of "A Fine Balance". We had known each other in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where we both had good experiences with work colleagues and helpers in our homes from India and Sri Lanka. We got to know them quite well, and this novel depicts the everyday life of the Indian citizen during the 1970's. It was truly one of the best novels that I have ever read. Never dull, while talking about the grueling workaday life of Indians struggling to survive.

When I told an Indian woman who was a professor at the University of Texas that I liked this book in particular, she was kind enough to send it to me as a gift. This book, in my opinion, should be read by anyone trying to understand not only India but also world affairs in general.