A House for Mr. Biswas

VS Naipaul's "A House for Mr. Biswas" is considered a classic by many literary critics. It is about a man who is frustrated up until the very end of his life.When Biswas is born, a pundit tells his mother that the boy's life will be bitter and painful. As a child, he bounces around until he marries, almost by accident, the daughter of a wealthy and respected Indo-Trinidadian family. Biswas spends the rest of his life trying to live outside the shadow of that family, blaming everyone but himself for a never ending parade of failures that he actually creates.Many of the characters created by Biswas are reprehensible. There are wife-beaters and wives who accept beatings with pride. Biswas himself is childish with his attitude that the world owes him favors. He beats his own children and never seems to work until he stumbles into the job of a reporter for a national paper, a job he keeps for many years despite the editor knowing he plagiarizes, lies, and exaggerates.The value in this book is the fascinating mixture of culture that exists throughout the Caribbean. Learning about the industry, customs, and ways of Trinidad is endlessly fascinating. Unfortunately, there are plenty of unnecessary narrations that get in the way of learning about this culture and Mr. Biswas' fate.The book is long and dense. Reading it can feel like hiking through a swamp at times. The reward that is revealed at the beginning of the book - seeing Mr. Biswas achieve his dream of owning his own home - helped me get through this.

A House For Mr. Biswas is largely a fictionalized biography of the author's father, an ethnic Indian who was born and lived his life in Trinidad in the early decades of the 20th century. Born into a roughly middle class family and a highly structured and ritualized Hindu lifestyle, Mr. Biswas (and this is how he is referred to, even as a newborn) unwittingly marries into a large, relatively prosperous, multi-generational Indian family (The Tulsis). These in-laws provide insurance against his frequent failures; however never fail to rankle him with their condescension and sarcasm as he attempts "to paddle his own boat." Virtually the entire book chronicles his struggle to escape the Tulsi orbit, symbolized by his yearning for and pursuit of his own dwelling.The novel is instructive in its depiction of life on the Caribbean island during the period surrounding the two World Wars of the early twentieth century. The interaction between the ethnic Indians, the natives of the island and the mixed race inhabitants is also of some interest. All in all, however, the story fails to capture the reader's interest and becomes little more than a recitation of chronological events, many of whom seem to repeat themselves ad infinitum.While the title character's struggles are sometimes inspiring (but almost universally unsuccessful), it is difficult to become emotionally invested in his endeavors for the simple reason that he is not an exceptionally pleasant or "good" person. In fact, he is a miserable human being; an awful husband, a terrible father, an ungrateful, whining, complaining, lazy, two faced, hypocritical liar and spendthrift. His many failures are almost pre-destined and fail to engender any kind of sympathy (except for his long suffering wife and children, who were it not for Mr. Biswas's in-laws would have likely starved to death).The story is not without its interesting vignettes, but they are far fewer than one would hope for in a novel of this repute.

Funny how "seeking" is such a big part of quests and questions, yet the distinction between them seems so clear at first. A quest implies a clear direction. A question is full of uncertainty. This book has me thinking about both, and I'm not sure what the main character struggles with more. Gorgeous sense of place, real characters and a quest for identity that questions everything.

I have been a fan of the writing of V.S. Naipaul for some time, and I've been meaning to getting around to reading his career-making novel A House For Mr Biswas (1961). It is a rather long novel, so it has remained on the shelf (metaphorically speaking-since I read the ebook version). However, Naipaul's recent death and Barack Obama's recommendation as a summer read moved it up my book reading queue. And I'm glad I finally got around to reaing it. It is an epic comic novel with great dialogue and written in a grand style about the comic-tragic Mr Biswas. The scale and execution calls to mind another great darkly comedic novel-Cormac McCarthy's Suttree. Biswas is an Indian born on the tropical island of Trinidad who spends his life trying to live with dignity and achieve his life-long dream of becoming a home owner. It almost seems as if his life is merely a series of tragic-comedic events that follow one after another-humor and pathos can be found in every aspect of his life from his birth, too his life as a sign painter, to his marriage, and subsequent post-married family life spent mostly in the company of his wife's family and relations that gives that story much of its comic vitality as the petty squabbles and other interactions between the family relations and inhabitants of the shared housing community drive the story. Naipaul has created many unforgettable characters, Biswas and his manner of speaking is not the very least of these. I daresay I am tempted to add the job description of "crab catcher" to my arsenal of personal insults. I must say I unexpectedly enjoyed this novel much more than I anticipated and will probably steer me toward his earlier comedic novels as well. That being said, I am looking forward to getting around to the several other Naipaul penned books that I have designated for future reading.

Naipaul's death prompted me to read this book from an author I had not read before. His reputation as a modern literary great encouraged me to start with what is often said to be his masterpiece. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. I developed no feeling for any of the characters and despite the novel's length was left with the impression that the characters were never fully filled out. There were passing similarities to Dickens but the book ultimately left me cold. Perhaps my nonexistent knowledge of Trinidadian Indian Hindu culture got in the way of my enjoyment but I don't think that was the only reason for my disillusion. I found no subtlety in the supposedly dark humour and ultimately cared nothing for either Mr Biswas or his extended family or which house he ended up in. I persevered to the end hoping to see some glimmer but to no avail. The book did not repay the hard work I felt I'd put in. I will not read another by Naipaul, Nobel laureate or not.

This is one of my favourite novels, partly because I lived in post-colonial Singapore as a child, and there are parallels with Naipaul's Hindu community in the W. Indies. It delves deeply into the parallel requirements of culture, class, family, naivety, strength, obligation, and personal need, whilst also being the best study (possibly inadvertently) of a man with depression I have ever read. However you don't have to have had any of his, or my, experiences to enjoy or get this book, just being a human being will do !! In places it is outrageously funny and at the same time almost as predictably tragi-comic. I read it after A Bend in the River which is more measured but both share the nagging sense that one is not fully responsible for what happens in one's life; perhaps not even half-responsible; and that we rely on the future being better then the present at our peril !

This is Trinidad, where Mr Biswas was born unlucky and remained so throughout his life. Manipulated into marrying into an enormous family, dominated by his wife’s cunning and utterly selfish mother, as were all her other daughters and their husbands, who nearly all live together in the family home. Personal habits are disgusting, hygiene basic; nasty, petty jealousies are rife. Beneath her tyranny, a husband’s word is law, his wife his chattel. Children are routinely flogged; a husband beating his wife is a source of much entertainment. Bitchiness, petty jealousies and ignorance reign.The atmosphere is stifling, and Mr Biswas’s innate rebelliousness gains him poor relationships with them all, from ridicule and cruel teasing, to abject dislike. It is imperative that he escapes to a home of his own, where he and his growing family can be free from the suffocating influences of his wife’s family.I hope this story depicts the minority, and is not typical of Trinidadian life. While entertaining, it was far too long, and could have been cut by a third, to no disadvantage.

Boy oh boy does this book drag on and on going nowhere and not very entertaining. Mr. Biswas such an uninspiring man. He is very difficult to like as are the other characters. It is far too long. Itreads like a primary school child's story, when they add a chapter every night and don't know how to wrap it up. And it is so depressing. If you are looking for inspiration or diversion or humour during a global pandemic then avoid this book. Also, there is no plot.

It is a depressing book and none of the characters are either likeable or elicit sympathy. One nagging question is how any of Mr Biswas’s children were ever conceived. There has not been one reference so far and I am half way through the book, to any display or arousal of affection or attraction between Mr Biswas and Sharma. There has been depiction or even discreet hint of any intimacy or physical connection of any kind at all. It is not even clear if they have shared a bed. How did his kids miraculously appear ?