Fasting, Feasting

This novel broke me - utterly and completely. The cover says that if the Booker Prize committee of 1999 could award a runner-up, they would have given it to this novel - I can't even imagine how the winner for that year could be any better than this masterpiece.
This work follows two PoVs - both taking place in an extremely orthodox household. The first is that of Uma, a staid spinster who can't get married, and so people treat her as a cursed woman who shouldn't exist, to put it politely. The second is that of Arun, Uma's brother, who succumbs to the weight of expectations that people have of the ‘solitary working male' of the household, and tried to recede into anonymity in all the facets of his life.
Following the household through Uma's eyes is a depressing and dreary affair, what with overbearing parents, apathetic siblings, her epileptic seizures dismissed as her need for attention, and an eclectic cocktail of family members. Some of the euphemisms in the novel feel as if Anita Desai is lifting the incidents from your household - and are all the more painful for it.
Arun is another highly relatable character for many - a person, who by virtue of his excessive smothering at home, just wants to be left alone - but even in the States, he cannot find such peace. Although his part in the novel forms the basis for just the last quarter of the book, it is no less significant for it.
I've not read either mother (Kiran Desai) or daughter before this, so this novel came as a pleasant surprise. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that a dreary slice-of-life drama following a conservative household could be so heartbreaking. This is the quintessential short read, and deserves a much higher rating on the site.