A Suitable Boy

"Vikram Seth is a great poet. His first novel, The Golden Gate , was a novel-in-verse, which is a huge, bravura achievement. Here, I think he deliberately took on the big 19th-century form I was talking about, but tries to do something quite different with it. He takes his time going into these ox-bow lakes of narratives, moving away from the main thing and coming back. Ostensibly, yes, it’s about this young woman and who she will choose. Is it going to be Kabir, the cricketer? Is it going be Amit? Then this guy Haresh appears out of left field, not entirely of the same class but with qualities that the others don’t have. There’s a little nod to Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd , those kinds of books. But alongside it is the whole history of India. It overlaps with Midnight’s Children because he starts in the 1930s, moves through independence and into the early years of the republic, the first elections. So, the marriage is coming together and coalescing across the history and geography of northern India. It starts in what is now Uttar Pradesh, moves to Calcutta and Delhi, comes back to Uttar Pradesh. It’s a slow read, but once you get into it, it has all those pleasures of a really big novel. You lose track, come back to it, skip a few pages, go back, fill in the blanks as best you can. It’s a huge house through which you can happily wander. That’s a quality I like. And Seth really loves his characters. He feels for them, perhaps more than Rushdie feels for his. It’s semi-autobiographical—it’s about his parents and family at one level, but it’s more than that too. And the writing is very elegant, very beautiful. There are descriptions of shoemaking, of Indian raga being sung as the monsoon breaks, of upper-class kids flirting at society parties in Calcutta. Yes. And marriage in India has particular significance, right? It would be normal for a girl of Lata’s class to have an arranged marriage. She wouldn’t have that much of a say in it. But we are reaching a time where people, like my parents, had what was called a ‘love marriage.’ In Lata’s case, this is a decision she arrives at through convoluted means, while fighting against the pressures of a society which is asking her: ‘Why are you even thinking about who you are getting married to? Your parents will decide. Or they might give you a menu, and you’ll choose from what’s on it, i.e from a short-list of names.’ That’s the background score to the whole thing—women getting more powerful in modern India, and saying that the first thing they are going to decide is who they are going to marry. And parallel to that, they will study and gain qualifications, not be an adjunct to their husband’s career. In fact, Vikram Seth’s mother was the first woman justice of the Supreme Court. My mother was headmistress of a girl’s school early in her life, a very powerful woman who educated herself, and that led to a life in which she was making all the decisions in partnership with my father. But that was not common, and in fact even today is less common than it should be. But that’s changing."

"My father, who’s a novelist and was a teacher for many years, taught Vikram when he came to England to study for his A-levels in the 1970s. I can remember my dad telling me later on, in the late 1980s, that one of his ex-pupils was going to be the greatest writer of his generation. When I was in my teens Vikram came to talk at his old school, where I was studying, and he stayed with us. That was when I got to know him and when my father got to know him again. Then, independently, we became friends in the adult world. I bumped into him when I was playing cricket in Australia and he was giving a talk. We now live around the corner from each other in west London. So he’s a very good friend. He gave me a hilarious piece of advice once: “The best bit of advice for a young writer is don’t listen to any advice.” What’s interesting about the book from my point of view is that once you get to know the characters, which does take a while, it becomes a book that you just can’t wait to get back to. It’s funny to think that a 1,400-page Victorian-type novel is something you can’t wait to get back to, but that’s exactly my experience of reading it. It takes a while to get a sense of who everyone is and to feel comfortable with the various characters and families. It’s a big cast and it’s like going up a hill to get to know them, and then there is this enormous downhill, this freewheeling period, when you’re enjoying yourself. It’s a fantastically entertaining book. Yes. It’s set around the time of independence. Funnily enough I interviewed Vikram in India at a cricket match, and cricket is one small thread in the book. Some of the crucial scenes happen at cricket matches. The daughter’s three suitors are all very different. One is a businessman and is more practical and wants to do his own thing in the world. One is a poet who’s shy and intelligent and ironic. And the other is a cricket player and was the daughter’s first love. So you get three different types of men competing for the girl’s hand in marriage and the story revolves around this with the backdrop of events in the aftermath of Indian independence. So getting to know a writer who you admire very much is a stroke of luck, especially when you’re starting on your own career. I hadn’t written my first book then. I could have chosen any of Vikram’s books because I love all of them, but A Suitable Boy you just live with for the rest of your life because you get to know the characters so well."