Like writers of The Michigan Daily Book Review past, our fearless reviewers are once again tackling the Booker Prize Shortlist. Every year, six English-language books published in the UK and Ireland are nominated, and six Daily reviews follow. Join us as we make our way through this year’s list over the next couple weeks, and, before the announcement Nov. 10, tune in for our final predictions piece, where we will share who we think will win (and who we think should).
— Cora Rolfes, Senior Arts Editor, and Alex Hetzler, Books Beat Editor
In the mountains of Vermont, college student Sonia is racked with homesickness. Thousands of miles from her family in India, she finds companionship through an intimate relationship with an older man named Ilan. Not too far away, in Brooklyn, journalist Sunny is lonely. Sunny’s family also lives in India, and he too feels alienated, specifically from his American girlfriend and her unfamiliar way of life. Across the globe, Sonia and Sunny’s family members, who are constantly in a bustling and vibrant environment, cannot seem to comprehend the isolation that their relatives face. The novel thus follows the plan they hatch to set up Sonia and Sunny — and how their meddling goes awry.
Kiran Desai’s novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” weaves together the lives of these characters across oceans, threading together themes of isolation and love while balancing issues of identity with nuance and delicacy. Shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, the story is certain to pique the interest of those who have forgotten what home feels like. Desai’s writing captures the essence of loneliness and what it means to be labeled an outsider. But despite the ambitious premise of the novel, the story itself falls short of the expectations it sets.
The books opens with Mina Foi — one of Sonia’s relatives — who is the first of the countless characters that are introduced and who add almost nothing to the storyline. Desai’s attempts to incorporate an abundance of relatives into the novel takes away from the so-called “love story” lying at the heart of the book. Sonia and Sunny do not cross paths until late in the novel, and when they finally do, the connection between the two feels superficial and forced. Where Sonia is sensitive and introspective, Sunny is detached and lacking in depth. The two do not appear compatible, and Desai never proves that they are. This fraught dynamic only further isolates them as their relationship progresses. The novel is described as a love story, yet Desai spends minimal time focusing on the good parts of their relationship, instead calling into question whether Sonia and Sunny truly love each other or if their emotional disconnect prohibits them from doing so.
“Sonia and Sunny” sprawls across continents and family trees, with vivid prose conjuring the heat of New Delhi or busy rush of New York City, but Desai struggles to justify the novel’s length. The pacing, initially tighter as her protagonists navigate their unlucky American love affairs, becomes derailed once they return to India. Sonia and Sunny are unaware of each other for most of the book, but their romance develops at a breakneck pace shortly after their first meeting. Sonia, an aspiring writer, makes occasional references to her desire to put all of her life into a novel, and it’s apparent that this was Desai’s aim as well. The book flits over heavy topics like classism, colonialism and gender in brief yet didactic references, interspersed with frequent lush descriptions of the characters’ environments. Any build-up toward a conclusion for their relationship is destroyed by the constant atmospheric disruptions and her characters’ flippancy. Though Sonia and Sunny make internal references to being “in love,” they do not appear particularly upset when they have an unofficial breakup, and thus neither is the reader. The novel’s final act is simultaneously protracted and rushed, with rapid emotional development occurring under the same plotless monotony of the preceding 200 pages.
More jarring is the surprising shift in genre two-thirds of the way through the book, at which point magical realism takes on a prominent role in a story that previously only contained vague references to the mysterious and unknowable. Sonia’s fight to regain her identity after her abusive relationship is represented through struggles with literal demons inherited from her grandfather, one contained in an amulet and the other embodied by a bloodthirsty dog. There are valuable themes worth exploring here — generational trauma, the complexities of one’s creative identity, the politics of the artistic world — yet they are all diluted by Desai’s reliance on magical plot devices. With the stakes lowered by the sudden intervention of demons and ghosts, there is no emotional payoff in seeing Sonia actually develop as a character.
Although the novel is difficult to follow, Desai delicately considers an artist’s voice and the importance of preserving it. This aspect of the story is the most impactful and well-crafted, allowing us to intimately follow Sonia and Sunny through their hardships. Sonia’s romantic relationship with Ilan strips her of the ability to think for herself, almost as if she replaced her perspective with his. Meanwhile, Sunny faces pressure — even from his mother — to pursue a secure lifestyle and conform to American social standards. In this pursuit, Sunny loses the authenticity that comes with being a writer. Throughout the narrative, both Sonia and Sunny become detached from their creative self, heartbreakingly representative of the immigrant experience.
“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” is an especially topical novel as the politics surrounding immigration and what it means to be a citizen shift within our country. By exploring the interior worlds of just two characters, Desai proves that immigrants are not a monolith. These labels — Indian, American, writer, daughter and son — all mean different things as they are applied to the individual. Any country can be lonely, and any country can hold love and beauty. Appropriately, “Sonia and Sunny” ends on a hopeful note. Desai’s various characters — may they be mothers or friends or lovers — all come closer to bridging the distances that divide them, showing the enduring human desire for community.
Daily Arts Writer Meagan Ismail and Daily Arts Contributor Sofia Thornley can be reached at mismai@umich.edu and tsofia@umich.edu.
