No detail goes unwritten in 'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny'

“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” by Kiran Desai, is a book that took the author 20 years to write.

Desai won the 2006 Booker Prize for “The Inheritance of Loss,” but “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” did not win this year’s Booker Prize, but it was longlisted. This 700-page book is a tome, but it’s worth the read. While the book takes on themes of disaffected youth who are caught between cultures, countries, societal and cultural norms, celebrity worship, overbearing parents and bad relationships, all the while finding love but not in the sappy, butterflies in the stomach, love at first sight way. There’s also a focus on art and fantastic descriptions of Delhi, Goa and New York City.

The book begins with Sonia, a senior at a fictional college in Vermont. She works at the campus library where she reads many books but is obsessed with “Anna Karenina” and desires to become a writer. She ends up in a relationship with a well-known, narcissistic artist named Ilan. This man-child is abusive and drives Sonia to the point where she walks on eggshells around him, living in constant fear that she’s going to disappoint him. Their relationship ends, but she was a muse for Ilan and many of his most famous paintings are of the beautiful Sonia. She accidentally leaves behind her amulet that belonged to her German grandfather who is also a painter, which leads her to believe that her life is cursed and that “happiness is for other people.” Her parents recognize her loneliness and attempt to set her up in an arranged marriage to a long-time son of a family friend.

The man who the parents attempted to set her up with is Sunny Bhatia, a copy editor for the Associated Press. He, too, is an obsessive reader, and his favorite authors are J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut. By reading their books, this gives him his perspective on America and Americans in general. Though he is deeply philosophical, he struggles to belong and doesn’t always care for the idea of belongingness with his own South Asians. He has his own issues with his mother who is self-obsessed with class and Sunny, who she would refuse to share with any other woman.

Overall, the book is a fantastic story that is well worth the time that it takes to read it in its entirety. It really does have everything: magical realism, race relations, colonialism, the struggles of being Americanized with the backdrop of also attachments to their birth countries, being lonely when surrounded by millions of people, all the while being immersed in a book where no detail goes unwritten.

Deborah Condit is the owner of Books on the Bosque, 6261 Riverside Plaza Lane, Suite A-2 or at booksonthebosque.com.