Rating: 
Summary: one of the BEST books I've ever read + Mistry's best book
Review: It's interesting how many people compare this book to Mistry's other (Oprah-recommended? Ha!) and popular later book, A Fine Balance. Although written by the same author, I don't think these two books are as comparable as some of the other reviews would suggest. *Such A Long Journey focuses its story through the lens of one main character, Parsi father Gustad Noble, and touches upon many background stories (other major characters, minor characters, political background of India at time) in a subtly-woven manner. The journey is a lifelong and universal one, but compressed around seemingly mundane events. Mistry's storytelling style (particularly in this book) is subtle, fluid, and seamlessly woven together: the reader wants to tear the seams apart for more while simultaneously holding them together to avoid delving too deeply. *Some of Mistry's images and diction in this book are so powerful, yet exert their power in barely perceptible and nuanced ways. Here's an example that resonates at multiple levels: "Alone, Gustad gazed at the horizon. There the sea was calm. The tidal hustle and bustle could only be perceived near the shore. How reassuring, the tranquillity at the far edge, where the water met the sky. While the waves crashed against his rock. He felt an intense-what? joy? or sadness? did it matter?...If a person cried here, by the sea, he thought, then the tears would mix with the waves. Salt water from the eyes mixing with salt water from the ocean. The possibility filled him with wonder." Honestly, this book leaves you with a kind of tugging at the end, or (as Mistry himself narrates through a character in this book) with: "...a kind of sadness, that the book was finishing too soon, without telling him everything he wanted to know." Some of these reviewers just can't handle the simple elegance of that.
Rating:
Summary: one of the BEST books I've ever read + Mistry's best book
Review: It's interesting how many people compare this book to Mistry's other (Oprah-recommended? Ha!) and popular later book, A Fine Balance. Although written by the same author, I don't think these two books are as comparable as some of the other reviews would suggest. *Such A Long Journey focuses its story through the lens of one main character, Parsi father Gustad Noble, and touches upon many background stories (other major characters, minor characters, political background of India at time) in a subtly-woven manner. The journey is a lifelong and universal one, but compressed around seemingly mundane events. Mistry's storytelling style (particularly in this book) is subtle, fluid, and seamlessly woven together: the reader wants to tear the seams apart for more while simultaneously holding them together to avoid delving too deeply. *Some of Mistry's images and diction in this book are so powerful, yet exert their power in barely perceptible and nuanced ways. Here's an example that resonates at multiple levels: "Alone, Gustad gazed at the horizon. There the sea was calm. The tidal hustle and bustle could only be perceived near the shore. How reassuring, the tranquillity at the far edge, where the water met the sky. While the waves crashed against his rock. He felt an intense-what? joy? or sadness? did it matter?...If a person cried here, by the sea, he thought, then the tears would mix with the waves. Salt water from the eyes mixing with salt water from the ocean. The possibility filled him with wonder." Honestly, this book leaves you with a kind of tugging at the end, or (as Mistry himself narrates through a character in this book) with: "...a kind of sadness, that the book was finishing too soon, without telling him everything he wanted to know." Some of these reviewers just can't handle the simple elegance of that.
Rating: 
Summary: Such a Beautiful Read
Review: Mistry is a modern author whose writing compares to author's of "the Great Books". Such a Long Journey gives a stunning idea of life during Indira Gandhi's reign. Besides the cultural lesson on India you receive from reading this book, you also come away with the struggles of loyalty a man faces with friendship and family. This book is not as engaging as A Fine Balance, but a wonderful read nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Such a Beautiful Read
Review: Mistry is a modern author whose writing compares to author's of "the Great Books". Such a Long Journey gives a stunning idea of life during Indira Gandhi's reign. Besides the cultural lesson on India you receive from reading this book, you also come away with the struggles of loyalty a man faces with friendship and family. This book is not as engaging as A Fine Balance, but a wonderful read nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: a powerful, moving story filled with humanity and character
Review: mistry's first novel is a beautifully crafted, well-engineed tale of life in bombay. we are given characters to cherish and cheer for as we are taken through the daily rituals of life in india. i quite enjoyed the remarkable debut by a promising canadian author...
Rating:
Summary: Mistry's best work
Review: Not as tragic or as huge in scope as A Fine Balance, this book chronicles the life and struggles of a middle-class Parsi family in Bombay with all the detail and delicacy that Mistry is capable of. Like A Fine Balance, though, it shares an underlying critique of the corruption of Indira Gandhi's regime which is just scathing, and is essential reading even for those who know little else about modern Indian politics.
Rating:
Summary: An all time great
Review: Rohinton Mistry is easily the best among all Indian expat writers. He remembers, cherishes and captures India better than anyone else I've read. The difference between his two masterpieces, "A Fine Balance" and "Such a Long Journey", is that the first is all-encompassing and hence somewhat diluted; whereas "Such a Long Journey" lives in a simple microcosm affected by outside events and is richer as a result. Both are great books though, and the author's stamp is unmistakable in both: think "War and Peace" vs "Anna Karenina".
If you, like me, grew up in a middle class family in Bombay, "Such a Long Journey" could very well be about a neighbour of yours. Mistry takes you on a ride around the streets and markets of the Bombay you loved, makes politically incorrect (but funny) jokes about Sardars and Parsis, criticizes the Shiv Sena and the municipality, and even adds a sort of preface to the deaths of Sanjay and Indira Gandhi. He makes you remember - with a lot of fondness - Rex Jelly and gum bottles with rubber nipples and many other things that once made up socialist India. He makes you nostalgic about the past, and captures Bombay in an amazing time capsule of turbulence, struggle and joy. Such a Long Journey also - plain and simple - tells a wonderful story about wonderful characters.
The best thing about Mistry's writing is that he is so realistic about the everyday things. He will translate word for word and make the spoken sentence more authentic. He will not explain a Gujrati idiom or Hindi swear word in a footnote, like many expat authors are prone to do. This enriches the experience even for a non-Indian - it just makes for better writing. For example, even if you don't understand French, you'll find that the best translation of The Three Musketeers begins with the Huguenots making a second Rochelle out of the bourg of Meung and not the protestants laying siege to the village of Meung.
In short, Such a Long Journey is a remarkable piece of work: unputdownable and mesmerizing.
Rating:
Summary: A long jouney, but pleasant
Review: Rohinton Mistry's first novel provides a door through which to step into the lives of a Parsi community in early 1970's Bombay. The world of Khodadad building turns out to be not so alien to a western reader: the same jealousies, petty grudges and gossip one might expect from one's own neighbors. The religious conflict and overwhelming poverty that always loom large in western media portrayals of India are here relegated to the background, and the success and tribulations of the Noble family come to the fore in what is essentially the story of an ordinary man living in what he perceives to be an ordianry world. While Gustad Noble's home life seems to be spiralling out of control, one son refusing to attend the right college, his daughter enduring never-ending bouts of sickness, and his wife feverishly invoking traditional treatments on all sides, he becomes anonymously embroiled in a scandal that reaches to the heart of Indira Ghandi's corrupt power structure, claims his best friend, and shakes his faith in his country to its core. Gustad's efforts to clean up the wall of the Khodadad compound, for years an impromptu lavatory, yield results beyond expectation - transforming a cesspool into a shrine. The problems facing India in the 70's, religious intolerance and the aftereffects of partition, are reflected in miniature as the wall and the Noble's are caught between municipal corruption and the mob. All in all, very much worth the read. I'm looking forward to tackling "A Fine Balance", Mistry's second (and longer) novel, also shortlisted for the Booker. Cheers
Rating:
Summary: A Noble Journey
Review: Rohinton Mistry's novel, Such a Long Journey, is an engrossing and provocative tale. The main character Gustad Noble is aptly named, for here is a man of true nobility--not by birth, but by his being, his determination, and his goodness. This novel is truly a journey, and Mistry takes us by the hand, guiding us into the unfamiliar cultural landscape of India, taking us along with Gustad and his family as they struggle with all the assaults of being human, as they strive to sustain their way of life on the verge of a changing, evolving society.
Mistry's characters are real; they're developed as individuals and they stand seperatly--from the main character Gustad Noble to his upstairs neighbor who barks, literally, at the moon. When one of many of Mistry's characters dances their way onto this carefully wrought stage, he or she envelopes the reader--we don't wait for this scene to finish in order to get to the meat of the matter--we relax, we sift slowly with the writing as we're there with each of the characters' struggles.
This is a book of enormity. This is a book that when finished, regret sets in. The last few pages dangle themselves out, and when the last word is read and the book closed, the reader has a sense that this one is special, that there aren't many like this one, and that it's too bad, really, that it's over.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for our Deekra !
Review: Superb story-telling. Engrossing, intricate, humorous, ironic, and more. Takes one back to older, gentler, days in Bombay - when the very character of Bombay began to change. A citywide-character defined primarily by the pioneering Parsi influence that played such an immense role in Bombay's, growth and development. Mistry gives us some sense of these cataclysmic changes in mores, values, outlook - all in the microcosm of the Khodadad building (a residential apt. complex of middle-class Parsi families)
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