Kiran Desai’s second novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. In Nepal, there was quite a hullabaloo over it with readers calling it insensitive and prejudiced. I tried reading it but I couldn’t finish it. It wasn’t the depiction of Nepalis in the novel that made me unable to read it. I just couldn’t relate to the story. It felt a little off. I have since then heard people rave about the book as well as criticize it.

Readers in Nepal were infuriated by the way Desai had portrayed Nepalis in the book. They come across as crooks and people on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Desai’s disdain for Nepalis is palpable in the book, says a friend who is a voracious reader. And I agreed with her, having found what little I read quite off-putting. I believe writers should have the creative license to write uninhibitedly but to have their biases shine through is something else. So imagine my surprise when this friend told me she was reading Desai’s third novel, ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’, and that she was quite liking it. 

I bought the tomb of a book, priced at almost Rs 2000, on a whim. I’m a sucker for pretty covers and I fell in love with the deep blue cover with different phases of the moon on it. Also, Ann Patchett, one of my all time favorite authors, has endorsed the book. It’s right there on the cover: A spectacular literary achievement. Authors like Khaled Hosseini, Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, Lauren Groff, among others also have wonderful things to say about the book. Plus, it took Desai almost 20 years to write the novel. I figured there must be something in it. I decided to read the book in the month of January.

A couple of hundred pages into the book, I loved it. The characters were multilayered and I could relate to them. There were many lines and paragraphs that resonated with me. I was even taking photos of them to send to my friends. Things took a downturn when I was a little over halfway into the book. The story moved slowly and many of the instances were not related to the main plot and just weighing it down. Despite its length, the ending feels rushed. I finished it in a month, reading 20 to 30 pages in a day. But if I hadn’t roped in a friend to read it with me, I wouldn’t have continued beyond the halfway mark. 

Desai also came across as tone deaf, since despite the uproar caused by The Inheritance of Loss in Nepal, she has once again inserted a Nepali security guard into the story. The character, that comes in the form of a minor detail in the story, feels like an afterthought. The portrayal of Nepalis as security guards aka ‘Bahadur’ in books always irks me. Have authors not seen any Nepali in any other position than guards? If that’s the case, then all Indian and other immigrants should only work in department stores. Why are they then portrayed as engineers, doctors, and hot shot CEOs? 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny has many parallel plots that feel unnecessary. I struggled to remember what had happened to a certain character, for example Mina Foi who is Sonia’s aunt, when her story was told in bits and spurts and I had read many other character’s stories before getting back to her. That’s not to say that their stories are boring. Not in the least bit. It’s just that when there are stories of the protagonists’ grandfathers, mothers, aunts and various other relatives alongside the main plot, you struggle to remember who is who, how they are linked, and what happened in their lives. 

Though the book is essentially a love story, it’s also a story about immigration and the issues that come with it. But Desai didn’t know how to tell a story without dragging it out. Issues lose their gravitas when they are written like annoying complaints at best. Also the characters have a whiny voice and at times I was way too irritated to empathize with them. Kiran Desai isn’t an author I’m excited about or willing to read again, especially when she seems to be guided by fixed ideas and biases. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny had a promising start but it failed to deliver. Desai had all that time to tell a good story, instead she just makes her character mope around till forcibly tying things together in the end. 

Fiction

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

Published: 2025

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton 

Pages: 670, Hardcover