The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
Daughter of the Indian writer named Anita Desai, Kiran Desai is a much-appraised contemporary writer. She published her first novel in 1998, entitled Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which is a finely and ironically written book about the religious Indian world, with its prophets and their often fanatic followers. She received a Booker Prize for her second novel, 'The Inheritance of Loss'.
"The Inheritance of Loss" is written in the third person narrative, with the exception of some quotes, dialog and letters that help the reader understand different perspectives on the same issues. In this respect, I find it interesting to quote here J. Culler saying that "an author or narrator who reports the thoughts of one character must by definition be treated as knowing those of the others. You can't have selective omniscience, only selective communicativeness." In this novel we could say we deal with focalized narrative. Indeed, we are given access to the thoughts of one character in particular, or at least one at a time (Sai, the cook and his son Biji being the most frequent). In the case of the proud cook and his son from America, it is interesting to see how a sort of twisted telepathy works. While the cook is either thinking of the prosperity that has certainly struck his son there, or boasting with it to other Indian fellow-citizens of his, we are subsequently given insights into his son's view of the matter, or shown what actually happens in Biji's actual life.
But, the cook is not the only character in the novel who sees not only the English, but also the foreigners as superior to the Indian world. Throughout the novel, Desai ironically treats the Indians' fascination with everything English, their snobbishness in this respect: "cake was better than laddoos, fork spoon knife better than hands, sipping the blood of Christ and consuming a wafer of his body was better than garlanding a phallic symbol with marigolds. English was better than Hindi." We could say that she is there, judging both Indian and English cultures through the thoughts and voices of her characters. Her objectivity could be said to bring her closer to the idea of a God-like author, although this might seem a bit exaggerated.
Speaking of the author-God analogy, Barbara Olson argues that although the generally accepted idea of omniscient narrator implies that he knows everything about his characters, being a sort of God, the miracle performing attribute of God is highly unrecommended to be employed by the omniscient narrator, for otherwise this would result in bad, artificial writing. The characters and events must be credible for the readers, and any miraculous change of a tragic situation, for instance, can disrupt the fluency of the narration giving it a sense of lack of artistic value. We certainly could not accuse Kiran Desai of performing such miracles. Her tone is too ironic and often sarcastic to let her fall into such errors. Also, she gives voice to the thoughts of her characters, unveiling their inner motivations and aspirations, and generally avoids one-way perspectives.
In his response to Olson's article about omniscience, Culler argues that her reference to miracle-performing does in fact imply not the idea of an omniscient narrator, but that of an omnipotent one. The realism of Kiran Desai's descriptions and depiction of characters and real-life situations, without miracles occurring out of the blue, leaves her out of any such accusations.
Desai's book apparently states that if we are to restrain multiculturalism to the Western academic world and metropolis, we are likely to put aside the real causes of violence and extremist behavior in our modern society. She argues that: "Profit could only be harvested in the gap between nations, working one against the other."
Because of that, most of the people in the post-colonial world are only left with some sort of wannabe modernity, "in its meanest form, brand-new one day, in ruin the next." She also comes to remind us of the pure fact that "Old hatreds are endlessly retrievable," and also they are "purer . . . because the grief of the past was gone. Just the fury remained, distilled, liberating."
