This is a gem of a book. It's about a Parsi (Persian) family living in India after partition in 1947. It's a semi-autobiographical account of a boy with osteo imperfecta (brittle bone disease) who not only has to deal with being different because he's severely handicapped, but also because he's an ethnic minority in a country that is struggling with it's post British identity. The characters in this book are so alive! Each one sparkles with his/her quirks and failings. It's hard to dislike even the most unlikeable characters, because each is so bizarre and human. Brit, the boy with OI and narrator, is so wry, witty, sassy, and thoughtful that he makes his family and friends look like a bunch of loving and doting clowns smashing themselves in and out of the clown car of his life. Everyone in this novel is "trying to grow" and almost all of them do, little by little.
One of the women in my bookclub is writing her dissertation on the diaspora that occurred after partition, so we had a unique look at the culture. Though the Parsis are not her specialty, she brought up some things she did know about this community. They're small and insular - obvious from the book. Also, they're Zoroastrian, which means that their god is the god of light or fire, and that they have fire temples and their dead are left on a hill to be picked clean by vultures. So little things that slipped by like Brit's mother being horrified by smoking cigarettes, start making more subtle sense. The funerals that occur start making more sense as well.
Beautiful read. So glad Penguin decided to pick it up and publish it again.
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