Helen Stevenson HULLABALOO IN THE GUAVA ORCHARD by Kiran Desai (Faber &Faber)
In a small town in India, a post office official yells at his slovenly staff: “You will kindly pull up your socks and begin!” There has always been a certain buffoonish comic potential in the linguistic legacy of the British in India, a potential Kiran Desai’s novel happily exploits with no hint of dislocation. Yet this novel is the product of a particularly hybridisation: 27-year-old Desai was educated in India, Britain and the United States.
Sampath is the son of a dreamy eccentric mother and of a rational, enterprising father. His father and grandmother are vexed by his listlessness and favour the sock- pulling-up approach. He goes to live in a guava tree, and becomes a contemplative sage. The novel ends in farce.
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is a good, small-scale novel. It is not that there is too little in it, but rather that what is in it seems to be perceived from a distance. It seemed to be unsure of its own ends – is it a satire or a celebration?
Reading it, though pleasurable, was more like a trip to an excellent Indian restaurant than an experience of the continent itself.