We have all at one time or another become fed up with everything and everyone around us and wanted to escape. Hullabaloo recreates in our minds a world that, although pleasing to the eye and sometimes quite normal in general respects, can suddenly become an irritation and a confusion.

It almost makes one want to climb a tree. Beautiful words, descriptive words, going well together (on paper, as it were) - yet why do they strike you as harsh and meaningless? Why do you want to skim over them and move quickly, run, fly away from this odd world, much as Sampath wants to escape his earthly world. The language keeps flowing and you cannot stop it. Yet something is strange something makes you feel uncomfortable, and you never know why. The events, though sometimes ridiculous, are usually not miraculous or completely unbelievable. Indeed, Hullabaloo can be accurately described as a vivid dream, a dream you suddenly enter and in which you are at once completely lost. Whatever the reason, I quickly awoke from this dream and landed directly in the middle of another one. The fact that Salman Rushdie gave this book 'Advance Praise' on its back cover probably helped me make this error. Maybe I had this mis-preconception because all of these authors are Indian. When I began reading Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai, I was expecting Rohinton Mistry. Review Copyright © 1998 Garret Wilson - May 28, 1998, 8:30pm ☰ Review: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard Title Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard Author Kiran Desai Publisher Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, NY 1998 ISBN 0-87113-711-9 Review: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard Garret Wilson

Guava orchard