Review: The Weight of Heaven, by Thrity Umrigar

Umrigar, who lived in India for the first twenty years of her life, brings the culture to amazing relief in her new novel, The Weight of Heaven.

Frank and Ellie are deep in grief over the sudden loss of their young son when Frank's boss offers what, to Ellie, seems to be a dream escape - a chance to live and work in India for a year. Frank would be the head of his company's operations, which involve the harvesting of plants that have been found to treat diabetes, and they both would be away from their empty home, the neighborhood children who had been their son's friends, the pity and silence of their friends, and their also-despondent families.

Idealistic Ellie immediately falls in love with India, and becomes deeply involved with social services in the town, making friends and settling into what she increasingly thinks of as her real home. Frank, on the other hand, begins to lose his ideals as he fights with the townspeople over the plants, which were officially sold to the company by the Indian government but have belonged to the villages as their sole sources of income for generations. The angry villagers, who had once been self-employed, are now impoverished employees of a multinational company, become increasingly angry and violent as they struggle against the company and the village upper-class, who work as nightmarish 'security' officers in the plant; to them, Frank is the symbol of their poverty, unfair government action, and white American occupational colonialism. Thus, while Ellie is uplifted by her experiences, Frank is continually beaten even further down.

The one bright spot for Frank is Ramesh, the son of the couple's on-site servants, an alcoholic man and his guilt-ridden wife. Ramesh becomes Frank's surrogate son, and increasingly the fanatical focus of his life. While Ellie talks of remaining in India forever, Frank feverishly dreams of stealing Ramesh away to America, and resuming his family life, whatever the cost.

This book is *fantastic*. The novel jumps in soon after the child's death, without detailing what happened, and immediately the swarm of sorrow and guilt and anger surrounds the reader and carries her into the story. The tale jumps around in time, always leaving hints to questions about things past and future but never quite answering either until the last quarter of the book. At that point, all the answers come in a flood, like a tidal wave rushing the characters to the final, horrible climax.

The narritive includes chapters told by Ramesh's parents, detailing his mother's hopes for her son's future and his father's burning anger and guilt that continally drive him to the bottle. Their love for their son is real, and simple, in stark contrast to Frank's increasingly insane designs to possess him. The contrasts in this novel, in fact, provide much of the drama: Frank vs. Ellie, rich vs. poor, Indian vs. American, worker vs. corporation, cultural imperialism vs. traditional villages, delusion vs. reality, and finally, ultimately, right vs. wrong.

The final chapters of the book took me almost completely by surprise. It's no secret from the way the story progresses that something untoward is going to happen, but the actual event is completely different from what I had thought was coming. The horror brings reality too late into sharp focus, and the brief final chapter is like a knife to the soul.

Rating: five out of five stars. Simply, horrendously, brilliant.