A House for Mr Biswas: V.S. Naipaul (Picador Collection) Paperback – 17 Feb. 2022

This book has just been and discussed at the book group of which I am a member. Everyone found something to like in it, but opinions overall differed a lot. It tells of Mr. Biswas, a Trinidadian Hindu (and from a brahmin family, so high-caste), from his birth to his death at the age of 46 (that is no spoiler - we are told of it in the first chapter). The character is based on Naipaul's father, and his son, Anand, on Naipaul himself. Mr. Biswas lives through extreme poverty and difficulty, constantly (as an adult) struggling to assert his individuality in the face of his wife's large and extended family, the Tulsis. His dream is to have his own house and he makes a number of attempts to do so, all more or less doomed until the end of the book, when he has a measure of (very qualified) success - again, we know about that right from the start.It is a complex book. The society on which it centres, that of Indians living in Trinidad, has its own rules and standards, and I found it fascinating to read about these and see how they worked themselves out. There are constant rows, but they are also supportive and dutiful in times of crisis. Husbands beat their wives and wives their children, but this is almost like an expected ritual, and there is even some pride taken in the effectiveness of these beatings, as if they are a necessary part of family life. Families respect the 'pundit', the wise man in their midst who performs quasi-religious rituals (for example, to bless Mr. Biswas's house at one point), even to the extent that when the pundit decrees that baby Biswas has an unlucky sneeze, everyone believes him.In the midst of all this is Mr. Biswas, usually sceptical and trying to be himself. And what is he? He can be foolish, impulsive, petulant, naive, sarcastic, rude, and negligent. About halfway through the book, he suffers what is clearly a nervous breakdown of some kind. Yet he has an enquiring mind, reads widely (Marcus Aurelius, Epictitus, Dickens and much more - he likes reading wiring diagrams and scientific manuals as well) and has a strange kind of resourceful courage that keeps him going.There is a lot in this book. It is often amusing. When Mr. Biswas gets a job as a reporter for the Port of Spain Sentinel, it becomes very funny indeed (he writes grotesque sensational stories for them). Naipaul has a considerable gift for description, and many scenes in the book, fully described, are vivid. Occasionally we get an insight into the extreme poverty endured by some of the characters. There is a wide range of interesting characters - Shama, Mr. Biswas's wife, Mrs. Tulsi, Tara his wealthy aunt, Seth, the character known as W.C. Tuttle because he has a large collection of book by that author (who wrote Westerns featuring Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens), Owad, the 'young god' who goes to England and comes back with medical training and an absurd degree of self-importance, and others.As the book moves on, and especially in the final 100 pages or so, the mood changes and it becomes reflective and almost elegaic. Mr. Biswas (movingly) remembers his mother's kindness to him - he has thought little about her as an adult ; his work obliges him to visit the destitute people of Port of Spain and the surrounding area ; the family has a happy holiday at the beach ; Anand faces the trials of the exhibition exam., which may give him opportunity for further study after school ; they get a new Ford Prefect and delight in it ; and Mr. Biswas becomes aware that he is a grown man, the head of a family of young people, no longer children, who will branch out in their own way. His relationship with his wife, always complex and ambivalent, becomes more clearly defined, and his death, when it comes, is beautifully and very movingly handled in an understated way.... and I could go on. This is a 'big' book in its scope and range, and an unusual one. It has been much praised, as has its Nobel-prize-winning author. I took great pleasure in reading it and found it stimulating, thought-provoking and involving, and that seems good enough reason for giving it five stars.

This is Trinidad, where Mr Biswas was born unlucky and remained so throughout his life. Manipulated into marrying into an enormous family, dominated by his wife’s cunning and utterly selfish mother, as were all her other daughters and their husbands, who nearly all live together in the family home. Personal habits are disgusting, hygiene basic; nasty, petty jealousies are rife. Beneath her tyranny, a husband’s word is law, his wife his chattel. Children are routinely flogged; a husband beating his wife is a source of much entertainment. Bitchiness, petty jealousies and ignorance reign.The atmosphere is stifling, and Mr Biswas’s innate rebelliousness gains him poor relationships with them all, from ridicule and cruel teasing, to abject dislike. It is imperative that he escapes to a home of his own, where he and his growing family can be free from the suffocating influences of his wife’s family.I hope this story depicts the minority, and is not typical of Trinidadian life. While entertaining, it was far too long, and could have been cut by a third, to no disadvantage.

I've had this book on my shelf for years and finally picked it up to read. It is loaded with pathos and written in a quirky manner that reminded me of Dickens - but in the end I gave up on it. The story didn't seem to be going anywhere, Biswas was the most contemptible character for whom I had no empathy - and I guess I will never find out if he redeems himself because I just can't bring myself to care

I never understood why it says this is a `comic' masterpiece on the cover. It's true that A House for Mr Biswas is often funny and always biting, but as a novel this is tragic and grindingly dark stuff. Even the happy ending (given away at the beginning of the book; I'm not spoiling anything for you here), only is a happy end of sorts. Perhaps it is the inexhaustible undercurrent of cheerfulness amid the squalor that makes this so readable, and on the surface a `comic' work.The novel describes the life of Mohun Biswas, the son of poor peasants of Indian descent in Trinidad, and his long trajectory from the sugarcane worker's hut to a still precarious position as dispatch writer for one of the capital's newspapers. Most of it is concerned with his struggle to escape from his very closed, self-obsessed community, still ridden with the caste prejudices and rituals of a Mother India its members have never seen, and from the tentacles of the Tulsi clan, a monster wringing dry the weak for the benefit of the leaders, into which he was tricked into marrying. Biswas wastes his life among the fields in various backwaters. He is swindled to ruin as a shopkeeper. He is threatened with knifing and arson. But mostly he can't be alone; he can't obtain the privacy, the minimum self-sufficiency without which there can be no dignity and for which the all-encompassing desire to own his own house comes to stand.Probably largely autobiographical - Biswas appears loosely modelled on Naipaul's father - A House for Mr Biswas has the strength of novels written from experience. It is richly precise and vivid in its portrayal of places, of people and situations, and in recording the passage of time in the small island of Trinidad. It transports the reader to a doubly foreign, faraway world, to great effect. In fact, the strangeness adds to the disorientation one shares with Biswas, making the story even more realistic. And this block of a novel is ceaselessly imaginative and never boring. One piece of trivia: probably a coincidence, but the plot's outline for The Shipping News, Annie Proulx's prize-winning novel, is contained in a one-paragraph anecdote in the later pages of Naipaul's book.

Well honestly I was intrigued by the length of the book for it is a weighty tome. But I just breezed through it. What do I say? I am blown away by the writing. It is so richly imaginative that I hardly felt bored picking it up. Coming to the writing - such humor, such ease and such is the language that takes you on a ride literally.Sir V S Naipaul, deserves every bit of credit for the writing is extra-ordinary and the vivid details, the drama, the clashes, the idiosyncrasies, the dialogues, everything is spot on.I highly recommend picking this book up.

I have been a fan of the writing of V.S. Naipaul for some time, and I've been meaning to getting around to reading his career-making novel A House For Mr Biswas (1961). It is a rather long novel, so it has remained on the shelf (metaphorically speaking-since I read the ebook version). However, Naipaul's recent death and Barack Obama's recommendation as a summer read moved it up my book reading queue. And I'm glad I finally got around to reaing it. It is an epic comic novel with great dialogue and written in a grand style about the comic-tragic Mr Biswas. The scale and execution calls to mind another great darkly comedic novel-Cormac McCarthy's Suttree. Biswas is an Indian born on the tropical island of Trinidad who spends his life trying to live with dignity and achieve his life-long dream of becoming a home owner. It almost seems as if his life is merely a series of tragic-comedic events that follow one after another-humor and pathos can be found in every aspect of his life from his birth, too his life as a sign painter, to his marriage, and subsequent post-married family life spent mostly in the company of his wife's family and relations that gives that story much of its comic vitality as the petty squabbles and other interactions between the family relations and inhabitants of the shared housing community drive the story. Naipaul has created many unforgettable characters, Biswas and his manner of speaking is not the very least of these. I daresay I am tempted to add the job description of "crab catcher" to my arsenal of personal insults. I must say I unexpectedly enjoyed this novel much more than I anticipated and will probably steer me toward his earlier comedic novels as well. That being said, I am looking forward to getting around to the several other Naipaul penned books that I have designated for future reading.

My wife read this book in school when she was ten years old. She always loved it so I got it for her to read on her trip. I think I’ll read it too when she’s back

Amazing read! V. S. Naipaul does a great job of depicting so vividly the lives of each one of the characters.

Small and mostly mild-mannered, Mr Biswas wages a decades long war with his wife's family, headed by the formidable Mrs Tulsi. Anyone who's been to India will love this warm, humorous and subtle book.