SOURCE: "A Family of 900 Million," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 23, 1993, pp. 4, 11.

In the following review, Ingle lauds A Suitable Boy.

It is no wonder that when Vikram Seth finished writing the rather simple story of Mrs. Rupa Mehra's search for a suitable boy to marry her lovely young daughter, Lata, he had produced a novel over 1,300 pages long. The author, you see, left nothing out.

He chose to tell the whole story, producing for all time the whole world of Lata Mehra, with all the intermingled levels of North Indian culture, including entangled and intertwined families, a plethora of castes and religions, levels of education, and political and economic aspirations. And sex and violence, as well as poetry and puns and jokes.

In a land of 900 million people, Seth seems to be saying, no one person can possibly be singled out: Their connections must be taken...