- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (May 18 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385493703
- ISBN-13: 978-0385493703
- Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 1.7 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 431 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #249,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Pity the poor Chawla family of Shahkot, India--their son, Sampath causes all kinds of trouble for his family, culminating in a Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, but in a village like Shakhot, hullabaloo is a way of life. Indian writer Kiran Desai begins her first novel with Sampath's birth at the tail-end of a terrible drought. His mother, Kulfi, half-maddened by heat and hunger, can think of nothing but food: "Her stomach grew larger. Her dreams of eating more extravagant. The house seemed to shrink. All about her the summer stretched white-hot into an infinite distance. Finally, in desperation for another landscape, she found a box of old crayons in the back of a cupboard and ... began to draw.... As her husband and mother-in-law retreated in horror, not daring to upset her or the baby still inside her, she drew a parade of cooks beheading goats." Sampath's father, Mr. Chawla is a man for whom "oddness, like aches and pains, fits of tears and lethargy" is a source of discomfort; he fears "these uncontrollable, messy puddles of life, the sticky humanness of things." This distaste for sticky humanness will prove problematic for Mr. Chawla later in life when his son grows up to become a young man possessed of a great deal of feeling and very little common sense or ambition.
Mr. Chawla's frustration comes to a head when Sampath loses his menial job at the post office after performing an impromptu cross-dressing strip-tease at his boss's daughter's wedding. Confined to the house in disgrace, Sampath runs away from home and takes refuge in the branches of a guava tree in an abandoned orchard outside of town. At first family and townsfolk think he's mad, but in an inspired moment of self-preservation Sampath, who had spent his time in the post office reading other people's mail, reveals some choice secrets about his persecutors and convinces them that he is, in fact, clairvoyant. It isn't long before Mr. Chawla sees the commercial possibilities of having a holy man in the family, and pretty soon the guava orchard has become the latest stop along the spiritual tourism trail.
Take one holy man in a guava tree, add a venal father, a food-obsessed mother and a younger sister in love with the Hungry Hop Kwality Ice Cream boy and you've got a recipe for delicious comedy. Mix in a rioting band of alcoholic monkeys, a journalist determined to expose Sampath as a fraud, an unholy trio of hypochondriac district medical officer, army general and university professor, all determined to solve the monkey problem, and you've got a real hullabaloo. Kiran Desai's delirious tale of love, faith, and family relationships is funny, smartly written, and reminiscent of other works by Indian authors writing in English such as Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, Banerjee Divakaruni's The Mistress of Spices and Shashi Tharoor's Show Business. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Desai's first novel is a wild, sad, humorous story about the oldest son of an eccentric family in a small Indian village. Born at the moment a crash of thunder signals the end of a long, hot drought, Sampath grows into a disappointing young man. After he loses a job, Sampath's mother attempts to comfort him with a guava, but it explodes as Sampath is admiring its green coolness, compelling him to flee his family and village to an abandoned orchard, climb into a guava tree, and stay there. He quickly becomes known as the tree baba. The rest of the family moves to the orchard with Sampath's ambitious father, who is determined to exploit the economic possibilities of the newly proclaimed baba. Desai's novel is full of wonderfully portrayed characters and beautifully vivid descriptions of animals, plant life, and the dusty environs of the village. An unqualified pleasure to read, this novel is highly recommended for all libraries.?Rebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs.,
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Happiness Comes in Doing Your Own Thing,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (Paperback)
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is the old sixties message of "do your own thing" brought to bear in rural India. That nation is still bound by caste and class consciousness that places strong limits on what each person may and may not do. Naturally, the truly talented may transcend those limits, but what about the rest of us?
To explore that point, Kiran Desai provides us with the least likely hero you've ever met, Sampath Chawla, who combines the simpleness of Don Quixote with the desire for ease of Tom Sawyer. He and a number of the other characters are especially interesting for being originally drawn, rather than representing traditional archetypes. In doing this, Ms. Desai is helped by her references to the lack of mental balance in Sampath's mother and her children. Some may incorrectly describe this as a humor book, but rather it's a biting satire of the nuttiness of the way things usually work. For example, in a job we are supposed to please the boss and rely on the boss's good will to provide for us. But if pleasing the boss means that we make ourselves miserable, what use is this? As another example, spew out a nonsensical aphorism and most people will find a connection to their own life . . . even if none is intended. We defer to those who seem to have superior power or knowledge . . . even when it's only a reputation for such rather than the reality. Ms. Desai's point is that the good life is the rational life of meaningful self-interest, unrestrained by tradition, convention, and habit. She makes the exposition of that point more fun than any other writer I can remember.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious!,
By Blue_Sky_Spy (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (Paperback)
This book is pure magic from start to finish. It is one of those rare books that you can keep reading again and again and again!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A multidimensional satire with a dash of fantasy,
By A Reader (India) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (Hardcover)
India has often been depicted as a mystic land of Sadhus, strange magic charms, spicy exotic cuisine and intricate religious rituals by the West. Kiran Desai's book is a brilliant satire that makes light of these theories in a comical manner. A satire that has social, political, economical, filial and even spiritual dimensions wrapped in layers of absurd humour with a dash of fantasy, the book raises some significant questions on the world and it's mad ways that applies not only to the fictitious town of Shahkot, but equally to any other part of India.Sampath, the main protagonist is a dull young man whose absolute lack of common sense and ambition is made up for by his fertile imagination and deliriously free spirit that lead him to seek asylum in a guava tree in an abandoned orchard when he feels that life is going out of control. But madness is a hereditary trait of Sampath's family - his mother Kulfi is obsessed with food in it's various forms, his ambitious father is obsessed with money and his sister Pinky is a droll and foolish girl infatuated with the Hungry Hop Kwality ice cream boy. Having spent his days as a post office clerk reading the town's incoming mail, Sampath finds it easy to pose as a clairvoyant holy man, a situation of which his family promptly takes advantage. He is joined by a group of monkeys on the treetop and earns the title of 'Monkey Baba' - Devotees start flocking to Shahkot to see the 'Baba' and Sampath's father seizes the opportunity to make some fast money out of the situation. But things take a crazy turn as the monkeys turn alcoholic, and pose a threat to the devotees' conglomeration as well as Sampath's family camping at the foot of the tree. Different people offer a variety of solutions for eliminating the monkey menace and Sampath finds himself in an obscure predicament. Things take an even more bizarre turn as Pinky plans to elope with the ice cream boy, and Kulfi gets determined to catch and cook a monkey before they are chased away. All these events and more culminate in an extremely amusing medley of a climax, and an abrupt ending that has shades of fantasy. Amidst such fun-filled incidents and livid descriptions of sporadic monsoons arriving late on summer-exhausted Shahkot, idyllic orchards bordering the hills outside the town and fantastic cooking with never-heard-of recipes, Ms.Desai brings out the various hues and flavours of human character. Several thought-provoking messages are dispersed throughout the book in a subtle manner making it much more than a simple light-hearted comedy. Ms.Desai has a remarkable gift for humour - The sections highlighting the desirable qualities of an Indian bride, Pinky's and Ammaji's adventure with the cinema monkey that takes them a merry chase holding ice creams and Ammaji's dentures in tow and Pinky's ludicrous affair with Hungry Hop among others are sure to have the reader in splits of laughter.
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