Rating: 
Summary: Its beauty lies in its simplicity
Review: A book with profusion of words evoking images and ideas, a book with a very refined sense of humour which will nevertheless make you laugh out loud; not merely smirk, a book with a stronger regional flavour than any other indian author i've read, a book so so simple in its construction yet so all encompassing...what more can i say! Kiran Desai though residing out of india writes with such minute detail about the commonplace in indian suburbia. She does not describe the beauty of the local mountains or rivers as some other indian authors do, or portray the traditions and customs of the region; she goes to the very daily life of the characters with which any reader can connect it with. The scene in which sampath is sleeping in a hot room full of snoring people or the scene in which his father upbraids him for his lack of enthusiasm and initiative in life are occurances the ordianry reader must have gone through and yet one cant but help but laughing at the way in which these domestic senes are described.The characters are also very well developed and though there being nothing extraordinary about the characters(in fact u might find most of them in your home or in the neighbourhood) each of them has some idiosyncracy. For example the extremely epicurean sampath's mother, Pinky's vainglory, sampath's father being very worldly wise and seeing an opportunity of making money where others might fear a loss, and of course sampath of whom i need say nothing about. The ending though others say is wierd or some others dont understand is i think the best way to end this type of book. One must'nt expect a logical or rational ending to a book which is one of the best works of creative writing that i have ever read. the ending is equally creative. Another critisism of this book is that it could be written better, it was very simply written. My answer to that is in the title of the review. Anyways the book is not as simple as it seems at first sight. Its a microcosm for humanity. It depicts the eternal struggle for personal space, the human tendency to make profits out of any situation, and the eternal pursuit of happiness by all in their own different ways. Its a bit of Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Joseph Heller and Tolstoy. U cant afford to miss this one
Rating: 
Summary: INDIA'S ANSWER TO "CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES"
Review: Born auspiciously during a monsoon which ended a long and devastating drought, everyone agrees that Sampath Chawla is destined for greatness. However, twenty years later, Sampath has not fulfilled his promising destiny but instead seems destined for failure. He can't hold down a job, he's prone to flights of fancy, and, frankly, Sampath isn't all that bright! So, when he climbs a guava tree and unwittingly becomes a famous Holy Man, no one can believe it...thus begins the search for truth in miracles. "Hullabaloo In the Guava Orchard" is a balmy summer read and a surprisingly funny novel full of lush description and irreverent wit. Desai has found just the right combination of humor and truth. "Hullabaloo" is India's answer to John Kennedy Toole's "Confederacy of Dunces."
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious on the outside, but subtle too
Review: Excellent fiction. Anita Desai is a born story teller. All the minute details of ordinary life described extra-ordinarily. Presently residing in US, this book took me back to India mentally. Very easy to identify with each of the characters. You have people like Mr. Chawla, very efficient, systematic and money-minded.You also have people like Sampath, who are fed-up with the mundane,time-bound and commercial life. Though the book makes you laugh aloud in the beginning, slowly it explores the human nature. The need for space. There's a little drag towards the end. (The book could have been a long 'short story'). But again the last chapter was very good and I think that's the best way to end the book. The 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard' lingers in your mind long after reading.
Rating:
Summary: India in our hearts
Review: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is a very positive reading experience; a carnival of tastes, smells, emotions and devotions. It is a smiling journey trough a India that are getting more and more interesting for each new writer and each book out of this human wise "continent" of its own. Kiran makes India more accessible for those of us who has never been there, and must be one of several writers that are responsible for more and more people wanting to see India with their own eyes. I myself reacted this way, and that must surely be one proof of the quality of the book. Kiran like other first rate writers lets us travel to new places and meet new people. I would like to thank her for that. In the book she introduces us to several families in a small Indian town and let us experience their hopes and their longings for the future.The main character is a day dreamer that everyone once had big expectations for. Kiran portrays his suprising (also for him self) rise to fame. Reading it gave me both some of the same feelings and pleasures as reading Vikrahm Seth: A suitable young man, and A house for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul and Arundathi Roy: A Good for small things. I?m impressed with the humor in the book and how she achieve being funny without diminishing her characters. Some one mentioned it as an Indian Confederacy of Dunces, but it is much more than that. But I also agree that it was equally funny. I will keep a sharp look out for further books from Kiran Desai in the future.
Rating:
Summary: if your of indian origin you'll know the people in this book
Review: I am American board person of Indian decent. Many of the characters and much dialog reminded me of family I had in India. The dialog and plot line regularly had me laughing out loud as I read. The book has a wonderful rhythm I can't describe. Desai does a wonderful job of making the absurd both humorous yet strangely plausible
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, colorful, a delight to read...
Review: I came across this book by chance with no preconceptions or set expectations (apart from what may have existed from my prior exposure to Indian authors). I found the whole book to be a delight -- colorful, fast-paced, descriptive. It combined good humor with political consciousness and seemed like an affectionate twitting of family roles and traditions of the neighborhood, town and society as a whole. Some of the events, taken by themselves, may certainly seem over the top (like something out of an Indian "Life of Brian"! -- if you're familiar with the Monty Python film of that name), but the author skillfully layers events so that she creates an internal logic that supports and propels the action, no matter how far out she goes. (And she does go pretty far out!) All in all, a captivating, rollicking, marvelous book.
Rating: 
Summary: Humourous...but no great literary feat
Review: I can really see this book being made into a cartoon by someone like Disney or Warner Bros.... and maybe a successful one at that! As amusing as this book was...and as charming as these eccentric characters were...the storyline wasn't really going anywhere. In spite of all the hype and rave reviews this book received....I really can't see what all the 'hullabaloo' was about.
Rating:
Summary: Kiran Desai is India's Charles Dickens
Review: I couldn't help but compare Kiran Desai with Mr. Dickens, the renowned master of characterization. She evokes the same gift of painting a character and breathing life into it. The situations wherein she puts these characters make for a very entertaining, hilarious reading. I have never been to India but after reading her book I can picture the old post office where Sampath worked and the marketplace where people can buy ready-made dentures! Her writing style can best be described as lyrical. I initially borrowed this book from the library but decided to have my very own copy - from Amazon.com of course. It is hard to believe that this is her first novel! I hope she's working on a sequel because not only do I miss the characters but a talent like Desai deserves to be read by more people.
Rating:
Summary: A multidimensional satire with a dash of fantasy
Review: India has often been depicted as a mystic land of Sadhus, strange magic charms, spicy exotic cuisine and intricate religious rituals by the West. Kiran Desai's book is a brilliant satire that makes light of these theories in a comical manner. A satire that has social, political, economical, filial and even spiritual dimensions wrapped in layers of absurd humour with a dash of fantasy, the book raises some significant questions on the world and it's mad ways that applies not only to the fictitious town of Shahkot, but equally to any other part of India. Sampath, the main protagonist is a dull young man whose absolute lack of common sense and ambition is made up for by his fertile imagination and deliriously free spirit that lead him to seek asylum in a guava tree in an abandoned orchard when he feels that life is going out of control. But madness is a hereditary trait of Sampath's family - his mother Kulfi is obsessed with food in it's various forms, his ambitious father is obsessed with money and his sister Pinky is a droll and foolish girl infatuated with the Hungry Hop Kwality ice cream boy. Having spent his days as a post office clerk reading the town's incoming mail, Sampath finds it easy to pose as a clairvoyant holy man, a situation of which his family promptly takes advantage. He is joined by a group of monkeys on the treetop and earns the title of `Monkey Baba' - Devotees start flocking to Shahkot to see the `Baba' and Sampath's father seizes the opportunity to make some fast money out of the situation. But things take a crazy turn as the monkeys turn alcoholic, and pose a threat to the devotees' conglomeration as well as Sampath's family camping at the foot of the tree. Different people offer a variety of solutions for eliminating the monkey menace and Sampath finds himself in an obscure predicament. Things take an even more bizarre turn as Pinky plans to elope with the ice cream boy, and Kulfi gets determined to catch and cook a monkey before they are chased away. All these events and more culminate in an extremely amusing medley of a climax, and an abrupt ending that has shades of fantasy. Amidst such fun-filled incidents and livid descriptions of sporadic monsoons arriving late on summer-exhausted Shahkot, idyllic orchards bordering the hills outside the town and fantastic cooking with never-heard-of recipes, Ms.Desai brings out the various hues and flavours of human character. Several thought-provoking messages are dispersed throughout the book in a subtle manner making it much more than a simple light-hearted comedy. Ms.Desai has a remarkable gift for humour - The sections highlighting the desirable qualities of an Indian bride, Pinky's and Ammaji's adventure with the cinema monkey that takes them a merry chase holding ice creams and Ammaji's dentures in tow and Pinky's ludicrous affair with Hungry Hop among others are sure to have the reader in splits of laughter.
A protagonist with a difference who seeks nothing except solitude in a shady spot, his eccentric family members, hypochondriac officials, prosaic civil servants, lackadaisical postmasters, a bunch of gullible `devotees' and a group of alcoholic monkeys together create an extremely delightful tale that transports the reader to a world where life is slow, time moves at its own pace and yet reflects the varied dimensions of existence in the present day with all of it's plastic nuances.
Rating:
Summary: Misplaced criticism.
Review: It has been some time since I read this delightful book, so all of its details aren't crystal clear to me now. But I feel like I must respond to those (both here and in a few periodicals) who claim Desai wrote this book for a "Western" audience. I don't think Desai wrote this book for any other reason than the sheer joy of putting together a fun, sharp story. This is no Oprah's book of the month marketing hogwash here, and it is preposterous to claim that Desai was "targeting" an audience at all, except, perhaps, the audience that simply enjoys a story for the story's sake. When I checked her biography on the book's jacket, I didn't see anything referring to her obtaining a degree in marketing. I think this is a stimulating and beautifully written first novel by a young writer who probably had no alterior motives in writing it except to tell a story. One recent reviewer here stated that Desai was trying "to show how the East really is ... whether it is like that or not" and used a sentence - a single sentence mind you! - as proof of that point. C'mon. Lighten up. This is a nice piece of fiction and it should be enjoyed for what it is, not for what hypersensitive, politically charged minds think it is trying to be. I do understand the criticism of the ending. But I would suggest that those who didn't "get it" go back and read the last few pages again. I love the way the events leading up to the last sentence begins crescendoing a few pages before. It was almost (cliche alert) like a jazz composition in its thought and rhythm. Read it out loud (that is how I enjoyed it fully) and you'll see what I mean. And it does come to a Bang! stop. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Going back to the jazz metaphor, it snapped me back to the reality of self and forced me to think about what it was that I had just read, like a composition that ends on a beautifully punctuated note. No cushy fadeaway scenes here - which are, by the way, the preferred ending for those "targeting" the "Western" audience.
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