I'd presumed, in my usual presumptuous fashion, that because Desai is an Indian writer, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard would be: (a) magic realist; and (b) post-colonial. Now, leaving aside obvious dealbreakers like bigotry, gratuitous violence, dire prose, etc, I doubt that there are two tropes/practices/whatever more guaranteed to make me run a mile from a contemporary novel than magic realism and post-colonialism (I was horrified to read some misguided assimilationist attempt to classify Murakami as a magic realist in one of the major papers a couple of weeks ago), and especially the latter, so I've been putting off reading the novel, an unsolicited loan from Yee Fui of some months ago. Anyway, thought I should get on to it a couple of days ago, and it turns out that only (a) actually applies, and even that not particularly offensively (though the frenetic final few pages seem very 100 Years of Solitude-inspired), so more fool me.
It's quite a charming read, actually - its tale of Sampath Chawla, the congenital layabout/dreamer who one day, on a whim, begins living in an old guava tree and, thanks to his habit of idly reading the townspeople's mail in his previous employment at the post office and capacity for spouting more or less nonsensically trite folk aphorisms, gains a reputation as a wise man, and his peculiar family and fellow townsfolk, is an engaging one. It's easy to read and funny and has some substance, too. Even so, I haven't taken it to heart - I'm not wired in such a way as to find the kinds of characters or narratives which appear in Hullabaloo especially appealing, and the whimsy oft-times - well, not exactly rubbed me the wrong way, but just didn't catch me in the way that I imagine it would a lot of people (and likewise the descriptive flights, which struck me more as faintly tedious than lyrical).
The truth is that I liked Hullabaloo a lot more than I disliked it. What I think is going on is that, while the novel's really rather well done as a whole and I enjoyed it, it also pushes a couple of my 'negative reaction' buttons - I'm getting set in my ways, I guess. But Desai's got something - there's no denying it.
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(And, in the time between my writing the above and getting around to posting it, Desai has won this year's Booker for her latest, no?)
