Insert Roger Ebert’s review of North here.
Seriously, there ought to be a law against writing a novel this long (nearly 700 pages) and this mediocre. Kiran Desai’s long-awaited novel made many awards shortlists and “Best of 2025” pieces, including President Obama’s, but reading it was excruciating. Of the novel’s many, many characters, none of them are likable or compelling, which is honestly kind of an achievement in its own right.
Sonia and Sunny are both Indians who have gone to the United States for college and must decide whether to go through the visa process in order to stay, or go back to India and return to living under the watchful eyes of their parents. Through a friendship between their grandfathers, an arranged marriage between the two was once broached, but the subject was quickly dropped due to a lack of interest on both sides. Instead, Sonia begins an ill-suited relationship with a much older painter desperate for recognition of his genius, while Sunny tries to make a career out of journalism while dating a white woman from Kansas who hates spicy food.
Desai really doesn’t do much to get the reader invested in either of her title characters. Sonia is a writer who doesn’t write very much, stung by a criticism from Ilan, her painter boyfriend, that her stories about India seem like cliched Orientalism about magic and monkeys. The audience’s’ perception of Sonia thus becomes shaped by her relationship. Ilan is a nightmare boyfriend, but in such an obvious, pathetic way that it fails to provoke the reader’s sympathy in any real way.
Sonny is also a writer, for the Associated Press, although Desai never really depicts him as having any great passion for the work. In the early stages of the novel, he is mostly defined by the petty fights he picks with his girlfriend over various cultural issues, as well as his complicated relationship with his mother Babita, a proud woman who is herself torn between wanting Sonny to succeed in America and wanting him to return to India so she can control him.
If you predict that Sonia and Sunny will eventually meet and fall in love and all that jazz, congrats. Can’t get anything past you. There are also numerous subplots involving their families back in India and their various servants, but they served mainly as a distraction from how thin the central love story is, mainly due to the main couple consisting of two characters with practically nothing of interest to say.
I am at a loss to think of how anyone, let alone so many publications, could rave over a book like this.
