SOURCE: A review of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, in Booklist, May 15, 1998, p. 1427.

[The following is Seaman's favorable review of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.]

Desai joins Arundhati Roy and other young, lyric, and original Indian writers engaged in transforming fiction with [Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,] this wily tale of a holy man and the havoc he inadvertently wreaks. In a novel redolent of myth, reminiscent in its food-related sensuality of Like Water for Chocolate (1992), and echoing, in the cryptic utterances and preposterous predicament of its hero, Jerzy Kosinski's Being There (1971). Desai charts the mysterious life of Sampath Chawla. Sampath's mother is an enigma, and her grown son is dreamy, reticent, and shy. Caring little for the world of appearances and things, he aggravates his ambitious father no end, and finally flees the claustrophobia of his home and post office job to live in peace in a...