What do You think about The Death Of Vishnu (2002)?
I enjoyed this so much I'm tempted to run out and get the second part of the planned trilogy, "The Age of Shiva," right away, but it would have to go to the far end of the taxi runway.This novel, set in Bombay, centers on the life of the title character, a poor man eking out a living by running errands for the residents of an apartment building, where he lives on one of the landings. (He's not the only one. Another landing is occupied by "Radiowallah," a man whose life dream was to buy a transistor radio and who now hoards its use to himself).As Vishnu grows progressively weaker, the novel interlaces his story, told through flashbacks, with those of the building's contentious, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic neighbors. There are the Asrani and Pathak families, who share a kitchen and whose wives are constantly battling with each other. Upstairs is the Jalal family, Muslims whose son Salim has fallen in love with the Asranis' daughter Kavita, and whose romance will send events toward a crisis at the end of the book.Mixed in are the shopkeepers in the neighborhood, reminiscences by Vishnu of his childhood and his obsessive love for a beautiful prostitute, and what was for me the best of the subplots, the tragic tale of Vinod Taneja, whose wife died prematurely of cancer, and who, each day, plays a recording of a movie song she loved, the significance of which you only learn as their story unfolds.Much of this based on Suri's own upbringing. I also rooted for this to be good because he is a mathematics professor who labored for years, through many rejections, before getting this book published.Even the dreamlike religious sequences were good, although I would have edited them down just slightly, but they mystically capture the out of body experience that you could easily imagine would come to one who is dying of hunger and illness.
—Mark
The death of Vishnu without Vishnu would have made a much better novel in my opinion.My beefs as related to Vishnu: The magical realism was lacking the finesse of, say, Allende and went on (and on)interminably; some of the sex scenes seemed gratuitous and bordering on violent (without acknowledging it as such); I wondered how exactly Vishnu managed to acquire the funds necessary to wine and dine his lady friend considering that he was an alcoholic landing-dweller? The goings-on in the apartment building, minus Vishnu as an active character, were entertaining and provided some insight into a microcosm of Indian society...but there just wasn't enough there to overcome the story's deficiencies.
—Rain
It was a long draggy read and at some point I was simply reading for the sake of reading. Would't go so far to say a waste of my time but it was not great. What did death of Vishnu manage to reveal is simply the complexity of a neighborhood and its superbely mundane daily life; of which I am sure I could absorb without spending time on a book such as this. However, that all being said, I must say, if literature were indeed meant to reveal innermost complexity of humanrace, somehow this novel manages to break the top most tip of the iceberg.
—Emily Iliani
