The Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny
By Kiran Desai
Review by Marija
Set at the turn of the millennium, this story revolves around two young Indians – Sonia, a student of literature in the last year of her degree in Vermont, and an aspiring writer; and Sunny, a journalist with the AP in New York. The themes woven through are those of love, immigration, identity, family ties, and societal values across continents. It is tragicomic in the sense of a comedy of errors with Sonia’s morally upstanding, sophisticated and traditional family pitted against Sunny’s corrupt and desperately socially climbing relatives, while exposing the vanity of both sides.
At nearly 700 pages, it is a large book, but with writing like Desai’s, it only intensifies the complete immersion that pulls you under like a spell.
As with all epic books of this breadth, the greatest challenge is keeping the separate threads while achieving the unity of storylines and maintaining the depth of the characters. To my delight, Desai delivers with aplomb.
For readers of Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Rohinton Mistry
