SOURCE: A review of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, in Publishers Weekly, March 23, 1998, p. 77.

[In the following review, the critic offers a largely laudatory assessment of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.]

Escaping the pressures of a family urging him to become somebody, a young man, fired from his postal-clerk job, climbs up a guava tree, stays there, shouts down platitudes to well-wishers and is proclaimed a guru—a situation his father eagerly exploits for its money-making potential. That's the gist of the simple plot in [Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,] Desai's vibrant, delightful debut novel, which soars above its overworn premise (a staple of Indian literature) largely because the author, 26-year-old daughter of novelist Anita Desai, is a masterful satirist of human foibles, vanities and self-delusions. Ensconced in his orchard bower, Sampath Chawla—who's not a charlatan, just a muddle-headed kid seeking a clearer perspective on life—has...