"Fire on the Mountain" by Anita Desai

Do you remember the old rhyme: Fire on the mountain , run run run ...


I read this book at the suggestion of an old Timpany friend. Its written by Anita Desai, mother of Kiran Desai, recent winner of the Booker Prize.

I don't know dude. There is a class of authors, usually women, that write this very strange kind of novel. Anita Brookner, John Banville, Yann Martel, (two other Booker prize winners), Ruth Rendell, to some extent Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, come to mind. The books are ... 'hypersensitive' is the word that conveys the feeling. They take a normal everyday kind of situation and then start going into detail in the mind of the protagonist. Every act becomes pregnant with meaning, every emotion is magnified to bursting point. Day-to-day tensions and quotidian struggles become unbearable. That kind of thing. Usually the writing is pretty good and often with a vocabulary that sometimes exceeds me.
This novel falls well within that category. Having got that rant off my chest, 'Fire on the Mountain' is a pretty nice book. It has a suspenseful quality that is surprising, given the kind of (mostly) sedate story it is. I read it at one sitting. Worth trying for a serious reader.

Some background on the author and her books here