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    The Weight of Heaven: A Novel
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    The Weight of Heaven: A Novel
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    The Weight of Heaven: A Novel
    Ebook419 pages7 hours

    The Weight of Heaven: A Novel

    By Thrity Umrigar

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the bestselling author of THE SPACE BETWEEN US comes an emotionally-charged story about unexpected death, unhealed wounds, and the price one father will pay to protect himself from pain and loss.

    “Powerful. . . . Twisty, brimming with dark humor and keen moral insight, The Weight of Heaven packs a wallop on both a literary and emotional level. . . . Umrigar . . . is a descriptive master.” — Christian Science Monitor

    From Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of The Space Between Us, comes The Weight of Heaven. In the rich tradition of the acclaimed works of Indian writers such as Rohinton Mistry, Akhil Sharma, Indra Sinha, and Jhumpa Lahiri, The Weight of Heaven is an emotionally charged story about unexpected death, unhealed wounds, and the price one father will pay to protect himself from pain and loss. Additionally, it offers unique perspectives, both Indian and American, on the fragmented nature of globalized India.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 14, 2009
    ISBN9780061853579
    Unavailable
    The Weight of Heaven: A Novel
    Author

    Thrity Umrigar

    Thrity Umrigar is the author of seven novels Everybody’s Son, The Story Hour, The World We Found, The Weight of Heaven, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time; a memoir, First Darling of the Morning; and a children’s picture book, When I Carried You in My Belly. A former journalist, she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard and was a finalist for the PEN Beyond Margins Award. A professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.  

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    Reviews for The Weight of Heaven

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      interesting culturally about an American family going to India to run a company with good intentions that go bad. Very bad.some good writing, but the story line felt pushed to make a point
    • 5/5
      Wonderfully written story about a couple who loses a child and decides to move to India to give their marriage a chance to survive. While in India, the father becomes attached to an impoverished Indian child. He appears to be replacing the loss of his son which brings him down a path which he cannot recover from.Gives a realistic look at how hard it is to lose a child and how the grief never abates-you just get better at hiding it.
    • 4/5
      With the devastating death of their 7-year-old boy, Frank accepts his boss's offer to run the company in India. Frank and his wife, Ellie, pack up their belongings, rent out their home in Ann Arbor, MI (Go Blue!) and fly off to discover a new land, a new life and new personal discoveries.I had slight variations in my feelings as I travelled through this book. The beginning was engaging. The characters had real-life qualities that created a desire to follow their story to see how they would deal with their loss and the adjustment of living in a foreign country. The middle lost some of the spark and drive. There was a shift in time, so the content had a more settled-in feeling, and frankly, I was more interested in getting back to the current story. Then the ending - it was dramatic.Like all people, Ellie and Frank deal with the death of their son in their own ways; however, there's a palpable, life-breathing ache inside Frank that can touch even the coldest soul.Originally posted on: Thoughts of Joy
    • 3/5
      I love Thrity Umrigar's writing, I get lost in individual sentences and marvel at what they convey. A story of loss and the extreme impact that can have on our lives. Umrigar draws you into the scene and the emotions of the individuals - the readiness to leave everything known to escape that tragedy that remains, the determination to find something to replace the loss, and the evolution of horrible decisions that you want to pull the characters back from making. The ending was awful, but it won't deter me from reading more of her books.
    • 5/5
      Umrigar's writing is simply incredible. When she writes about the anguish Frank feels when he finds out his son is in a coma, you can hear the sound coming out of his mouth. When she writes about India, you can see it, you can smell it, you feel such pain for the way these people live. There was not a character I didn't care about, one way or another. And just when you thought you knew how you felt about someone, something would happen to change your mind and make you realize that all of these characters are multidimensional. Heartbreaking and beautiful.
    • 5/5
      Frank and Ellie Benton have lost their only son to a sudden illness. Reeling from grief they accept an opportunity to relocate to Girbaug, India where Frank will run his company’s factory. Their hope is that distancing themselves from the memories that surround them in Michigan will help them heal and forge a new life. But Frank becomes attached to the son of the caretakers of their company-provided cottage. This is the third book by Umrigar that I have read, and the third time I’ve rated her work 5-stars. It is an intense and heartbreakingly real story. The grief and recriminations are so palpable they almost make my stomach hurt. Frank is clearly the more fragile of the two. He cannot let go of the anger and grief he feels and seems unaware of how obsessed he is becoming over the boy Ramesh. Ellie’s training as a psychologist is little help to them. She is too close to the issue and has her own grief, regret, and anger to process. The cultural differences, far from distracting them from their grief, only compound their distress. They do not understand the culture and Frank, in particular, seems incapable of seeing anything in a different light. Ramesh is certainly a bright and inquisitive child, but his parents cannot possibly provide him with the advantages that Frank dangles before him. This added tension between Prakash and Frank over the affections of Ramesh spills into each of their marriages. Edna, Ramesh’s mother, is eager for the opportunities Frank provides, and gets angrier and angrier with Prakash over his “jealousy.” Ellie is more and more concerned about Frank’s obsession with the boy but voicing her concerns only strengthens Frank’s resolve and makes him more secretive about his plans. The tragedy of this couple’s story is inevitable though none the less shocking.
    • 5/5
      I love the way Thrity Umrigar writes. She has powerful descriptions of feelings. In "The Weight of Heaven" we meat Frank and Ellie who have to cope with the lost of their 7 yr old son Benny. We go forward and back with this story and the very real and raw emotions they both experience. They move to India where Frank will manage a factory there and they try to get on with life. Frank immediatly falls for a young local boy, Ramesh, and it's clear to us all but frank that he is trying to replace his dead son.While in India we get to learn a lot abut the culture there and see how both Frank and Ellie deal with cultural and moral issues. The toughest part of this novel is believing the change in Frank that turns him into a obsessed and unhinged person. Umrigar pulls if off though as she is a gifted storyteller.
    • 3/5
      I love Thrity Umrigar's writing, I get lost in individual sentences and marvel at what they convey. A story of loss and the extreme impact that can have on our lives. Umrigar draws you into the scene and the emotions of the individuals - the readiness to leave everything known to escape that tragedy that remains, the determination to find something to replace the loss, and the evolution of horrible decisions that you want to pull the characters back from making. The ending was awful, but it won't deter me from reading more of her books.
    • 5/5
      As a special treat for myself, I pulled this book off my shelf, I love Thrity Umrigar's books and The Weight of Heaven turned out to be an emotional experience. I did shed some tears and also got very angry.Frank and Ellie Benton, living in Ann Arbor, Michigan lost their only child, Benny, to meningococcal infection. Frank is a business man for a company that sells medical products and Ellie is a therapist. When their boy dies, it brings havoc to their marriage. Frank blames Ellie for taking a short break from her sixteen hour stint of caring for their very sick son. His temperature was better before she collapsed from exhaustion and he was half way around the world on business. Ellie wants an escape from the constant grief and a new start that might help them to repair their marriage. She pushes hard for the move when Frank gets an offer from his company to manage a factory in Girbang, India. He didn’t like the idea at first but later on, he relents.They meet Ramesh who was a bit older than Benny and lives in a small shack that came with the property that they were staying. Ramesh’s father, Prakash does the cooking and his mother, Edna does the cleaning for the Benton’s. Ramesh is a delightful, intelligent but limited in education and social experience. Frank quickly becomes attached to him. Ellie finds comfort with her new friends.This book took a big turn about half way through. I was shocked and surprised at what happened. India’s class system is very present and Ellie is shocked at how poor the really poor are in India. There is spirituality, a rich appreciation of the cultural divide between the Western and India and a great deal of emotional torment in this story. The author, Thirty Umrigar is a master at creating emotionally powerful scenes and characters that are real and unforgettable.I highly recommend this book to all who want understand the grieving process and want to learn more about India.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely beautiful novel about a couple who is grieving for the death of their only son and how they deal with their loss. Also about the gap between rich and poor in India, corruption, and the high cost of the choices people make. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      This book took me longer to get into than Umrigar's previous book - "The Space Between Us", but eventually the story of parents who lost their son to illness settled in. Frank's decision to try to replace their son with the child of their servants leads to unforeseen consequences.
    • 4/5
      In the years following the sudden death of their seven-year-old son, Benny, Michigan residents Frank and Ellie Benton have witnessed the steady deterioration of their marriage. So when Frank’s boss offers him a position overseeing a company factory in the rural Indian city of Girbaug, Ellie convinces her husband it’s just the change they both need. From the start, Ellie, a therapist, basks in her new life, making friends with townspeople and volunteering her services at a nearby clinic. But Frank’s work brings endless grief. His company, Herbal Solutions, has taken over land containing trees that locals have long harvested for their medicinal properties. (One Girbaug resident is so despondent over his loss of income, he takes his own life.) Frank’s world brightens when he befriends Ramesh, the charming, inquisitive son of the Bentons’ housekeeper and cook. Ramesh soon becomes a surrogate for Benny in a relationship that simultaneously boosts Frank’s spirits and breaks his heart when he accidentally causes Ellie's death
    • 4/5
      "The Weight of Heaven" proves almost too much to bear for the protagonist couple in Thrity Umrigar's novel. The only way to survive the death of their son seems to be to redefine the nature of God into a spirit of "apathy" and indifference. This redefinition leads to tragedy. This novel is about the tragic consequences of loss played out across culture and between individuals. The novel has a good plot and very believable characters with a strong dash of moral dilemma.
    • 5/5
      This book was really great. I stayed up 'till 1:30 AM to finish it and it has quite a twist at the end!It is about the different ways people deal with grief, loss, and change. It takes place mostly in India. Althought mainly about a couple who have lost their only child, it is also about the effects globalization has on a small village. I highly recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      This is probably the best book I have read so far this year. Imagine the unimaginable. A couple loses their only child. They move to India to try and find a new life, one that does not remind them every waking minute of their son Benny. The character development is brilliant and what I loved most of all.. Unpredictable.
    • 4/5
      Clear some time from your schedule when you start to read this. Once you reach a critical point, you won't be able to focus on anything else until you reach the end. Thrity Umrigar emotionally lassos the reader in, and doesn't let go, even when you are screaming inside.
    • 4/5
      I was first introduced to Thrity Umrigar through her novel, The Space Between Us. It was one of those novels that made the author an instant favorite of mine. I knew I had to read every book she wrote. I haven't quite managed that, but it's still something I'm working on. I followed The Space Between Us up with Bombay Time and now The Weight of Heaven.What I love most about Thrity Umrigar is her gift for drawing out the emotions of her characters. The reader gets to know them through and through, feel what they are going through, know what they are thinking, and feel like we know them just as well as we do ourselves. At least that's how it is for me.The Weight of Heaven is more than what it might first appear. An American man and woman grieving for their lost son move to India in hopes of reconnecting with each other and starting a new life. Their 7-year-old son had been their world. His death has torn them apart. Frank Benton blames his wife, Ellie, for their son's death, despite her doing everything she could to save him. His anger has put a wall between them that, at times, seems insurmountable.Ellie is determined to save her marriage, while Frank, haunted by the memories of his son, turns his affections toward an Indian boy, Ramesh, the son of the household cook and maid. In his own way, Frank wants to piece his family back together. However, the path he chooses to do that will have drastic consequences.Ellie comes to love India, both the culture and the people. She is a psychologist and volunteers her time helping the people of Girbaug, the community in which they reside. She is well liked not only by the other characters in the book, but by me as well. She was not perfect by any means, but she has good sense and a thoughtful manner about her.Frank's experience in India is much different. He runs the Indian division of an American company and faces constant conflict with his low paid workers and the locals whose land the company bought from the government. He has a more cynical view of the country. The death of an employee rattles him, especially the circumstances surrounding that death. And on top of that is his own overwhelming grief for his son.I will be honest. I never grew to like Frank. I wanted to, at least on some level. I tried to understand him, knowing that people deal with their grief differently. His pain was palatable as was Ellie's. I wanted so much to reach into the book and comfort them both. I wanted to save Frank from himself. Because, even if I didn't care much for Frank or the decisions he made, I still felt for him, could see how the life he is trying to put together for himself is unraveling. He truly is a lost soul, who, in his desperation, made the wrong choices.I was most drawn to the story of Prakash and Edna, Ramesh's parents. Prakash, in particular. He is a complicated character with many layers. He was not the most likeable, I suppose, but, like Frank, there is a desperation about him, a longing. His only son is being showered with affection by an American man, offered things Prakash could not offer Ramesh. His once happy marriage is not so good anymore. His life was not what he wanted it to be. Edna only wants what is best for her son. She is torn between her loyalty to her family and letting her son experience the finer things in life. Where her husband drinks himself into a stupor and hardly spends time with their son, here is a wealthy American family who encourages his education and welcomes Ramesh into their home.Just as the personal aspects of the novel are emotionally charged, so are the social issues brought to the forefront: the impact of globalization on a small community and the cultural clashes between the Indians and the foreigners. The author offers a look into varying perspectives, providing a well rounded picture of the world and the characters she has created in the novel. And, although I am not going into depth about this aspect of the book, it was perhaps the piece I found most intriguing of all.I barely have touched on the surface of the novel. It is multi-faceted to be sure. It is rich in culture and character. The Weight of Heaven was in some ways just as I expected, but it also held much surprise. It was not quite the novel I expected it to be. Thrity Umrigar proved yet again why she is one of my favorite authors.Source: Bought Myself
    • 4/5
      A great novel about the differences in class in India. One character is from the "upper" class and the other works in her household as a member of the "lower" class. However, their lives, struggles, hopes, and problems intertwine. It's a touching novel and incredibly well-written.
    • 3/5
      This book is about a couple who lose their son and move to India to try and get past their loss. The husband becomes obsessed with another families son and the extremes he goes to to keep him in his life was not at all what I expected.
    • 4/5
      The Short of It:An emotional story about love and loss and so much more. The Weight of Heaven demands your attention, shakes you up, then leaves you heavy with the weight of it.The Rest of It:This is a wonderful, meaty book. As you can imagine, the death of a child is a delicate subject. There’s something incredibly tragic about losing a child. Even when the child is gone, his memory lives on in everyday things… a stray toy found under the couch, the shoe that lost its mate some time ago, etc. As Ellie and Frank cope with their devastating loss, it’s obvious to Ellie that Frank is having a particularly hard time of it. When an opportunity comes up for Frank to transfer to Girbaug, India, he doesn’t think much of it. The thought of leaving seems almost more painful but Ellie encourages him to accept the offer. Perhaps change is what they need.Frank’s company puts them up in corporate housing which includes the use of a servant couple, named Edna and Prakash. Edna and Prakash live in a smaller house on the same property, with their son Ramesh, a very precocious nine-year-old. During their time in India, Frank befriends Ramesh and tutors him in math. Frank cherishes his moments with Ramesh, but Ellie worries that Frank is trying to replace the son he lost.Unfortunately, Ramesh’s father, Prakash also thinks the same thing. Prakash resents Frank’s attention towards his son. The extravagant gifts, the promises of a better education, basically, his help in general. Prakash, although a hard worker, resents having to work for a white man. This is obvious. However, Edna, Prakash’s wife thinks the exact opposite. She gushes over Frank’s generous offers. She sees Prakash as a failure and treats him as such. Cursing him and openly wishing that she’d married someone else. As much as these two fight, there is love but frustration gets the best of them.In addition to Frank’s relationship with Ramesh, there is also Ellie’s desperate attempt to hold onto Frank. As the days pass, she feels that she is losing him. The only time that he seems happy is in the presence of Ramesh and this saddens Ellie. Instead of turning to her, he turns to Ramesh to ease his pain. However, Ellie loves Frank with all her heart and wants to see him happy, so she gives into his requests to be with Ramesh and often joins them in an attempt to see what Frank sees in this child. They decide to take Ramesh to Bombay, or Mumbai as it is now called for a weekend trip:"Bombay. Such a deceptive word, so soft-sounding, like sponge cake in the mouth. Even the new name for the city, Mumbai, carries that round softness, so that a visitor is unprepared for the reality of this giant, bewildering city, which is an assault, a punch in the face."During this visit, even Ramesh is affected by the level of poverty. As they arrive at their 4-star hotel, Ramesh is overwhelmed by its opulence. Stunned. Speechless. Ellie regrets for a moment that they didn’t consider his reaction to such an extravagant hotel. However, this is how it is throughout the story, Frank wants to give Ramesh what he cannot afford on his own, but in doing so, inadvertently asserts his money and power over the poorer people around him.Even at work, Frank is constantly at battle with the laborers. Trying to do what’s right, but not fully understanding the impact of his company’s actions. The constant class struggle, his overwhelming love of Ramesh, and the fragile love that he has for Ellie and hers for him. This story triggers a whirlwind of feelings, smells and sounds. At first I was devastated by their loss. Umrigar’s writing is so rich and beautiful that I shed a tear once or twice while reading about Benny and how he died and the pain that Ellie and Frank felt afterward.Other times I was very angry. I was angry that Frank could not see what he was doing to Prakash. Turning a man’s son away from his father is a wretched thing to do, regardless of how abrasive Prakash was at times. I was also angry at how oblivious he was to the working conditions of his laborers. This also filtered down to Ellie a bit, although my reaction to her was not nearly as severe. Ellie loves India and its people, but she too, chooses to bully them at times when she sees the need to do so. One moment that comes to mind is when she is trying to convince Prakash to allow Ramesh to take a trip with them. She threatens him, and he is forced to agree although it tears him apart to do so.As you can see, this novel evokes all sorts of emotion. I cried, I laughed I got angry. Through it all, I didn’t want it to end. I lingered on each page to bask in its beauty. Although these characters are far from perfect, they are easy to relate to. Every time I picked the book up I was completely absorbed by the story.The Weight of Heaven is the perfect book club book. There’s just so much to discuss. This is my first experience with Umrigar’s work. Now I must go read her other books as this one was just wonderful. If you like a book to sweep you up and take you to another place, a book that really forces you to think about the world around you, then you will love this book.Source: A big ‘thank you’ to TLC Book Tours for asking me to be a part of this tour and for providing me with a review copy of the book.
    • 4/5
      I fell in love with Thrity Umrigar's The Space Between Us when I read it several years ago and was quite excited to see that a new book of hers was being released. This is a very different story than that one was though, a look at Indian/American relations on both a global and a personal level.Frank and Ellie, two Americans from Michigan, have moved to rural India after the unexpected and breathtaking loss of their seven year old son Benny. They hope that with Frank's acceptance of the head position at a progressive, liberal-minded multinational company's factory in Girbaug, India they will start to heal themselves, face their grief, and save their suffering marriage. What happens, in fact, could never have been predicted. Over the two years since Benny died, Frank becomes deeply emotionally attached to Ramesh, the young son of his and Ellie's housekeeper and cook. Ramesh is a smart child who faces no future in the small village, both because of the lack of opportunity and because his parents are a mixed marriage, Hindu and Christian, and therefore not accepted by the community. Ramesh thrives under Frank's interest and tutelage while Ellie is made terribly uncomfortable by Frank's growing obession with the boy she sees as usurping the space Benny would have occupied had he lived. Aside from Ramesh, Frank does not much like India, tolerating it as best he can. Ellie, on the other hand, is thriving in this totally foreign culture, helping out in the village by teaching and counseling the women. Her humanitarian impulses remain unchecked while Frank turns more cynical, exposed as he is to the underbelly of the business world.Umrigar not only develops the personal angle in this story but she also focuses in on the impact of business and globalization on both the haves and the havenots. The workers at the factory are not only being paid barely subsistence wages, but the villagers are also angry that HerbalSolutions is treating the girbal trees they have come to see as their birthright as private property all because the corrupt and distant national Indian government has leased the trees to the company. When a worker, the local union man, dies after police roughing him up, things get tense. And there's no easy answer here given the general good character and responsibility of the company set against a way of life they didn't know they were disrupting. Neither the company nor the villagers are entirely in the right but there is certainly a fairly pervading sense of American might making right, even amongst the most liberal when their backs are against the wall.Umrigar ratchets up the tension throughout the novel so that the reader knows a big explosion is coming and that nothing good can come of it. But she manages to use Frank's increasing instability to bring the novel to a shocking conclusion, one that offers no easy answers for those who live and work in the global world. Right and wrong, intrinsic morality and gross disappointment thread through both narrative arcs here. Ellie and Frank's grief for their lost son is palpable and the growing menace of life in Girbaug seems to take on a life of its own so that the reader is compelled to turn the pages faster and faster wanting to escape the desperate sadness and yet needing to slow down and keep the ending at bay for a little longer. Frank and Ellie are a bit black and white as characters but Edna and Prakash make up for that, being more multi-faceted. The business situation with all its complications, stresses, looming troubles, and cultural misunderstandings rings quite true. Umrigar has written a book that will linger in the reader's mind for a long time. Those who are as fascinated by South Asian literature as I am will definitely want to pick this one up.
    • 4/5
      After the death of their seven year old son Benny, Americans Frank and Ellie Benton relocate to India. Ostensibly, the move is a career opportunity for Frank, but the real reason seems to be an effort to put Benny's death behind them. Although Ellie finds comfort and solace in her volunteer activities and close friends, Frank finds India harder to negotiate. He is working for a company that is mindlessly exploiting the country's natural resources, and labor disputes and anger abound among his workers. Frank's only happiness is his odd relationship with the young charismatic son of his housekeeping couple, Ramesh. Frank has taken the boy under his wing for tutoring and mentoring, despite the anger and resentment that it causes Ramesh's father, Prakash. As Ellie struggles with Frank's emotional distancing from herself, she also comes to resent Frank's growing obsession with the young Indian boy. Frank, oblivious to those around him, begins to contemplate dangerous plans for himself and Ramesh. He begins to put into motion a series of events that will devastate the life and family that he loves, changing the fates of the people around him forever. Both lucid and frightening, The Weight of Heaven expertly examines the mind of man filled to the brim with compulsion and the chaos he leaves in his wake.It's funny, I consider Indian fiction to be one of my favorite genres, but looking back, I see that I have not really read any books that fit this description in the almost three years that I have been blogging. When I was offered the chance to review this book by TLC Book Tours, I became very excited because I had previously read Umrigar's Bombay Time and had really enjoyed it. I felt that this book was a bit of a departure for the author. Instead of focusing intently on the vagaries of India and its inhabitants, this book mildly veers off into the suspense genre. Though suspense is not really my favorite genre, I did end up enjoying the book very much.About a third of the story, plot wise, focuses on American business practices in India. Umrigar uses her fictional framework to show what can only be called American bullying and slyness in acquiring and exploiting a specific natural resource of the country. It turns out that this resource is something that sustains the local people and that they are being restricted from using it, as American interests have bought complete ownership of the land and everything on it. This causes major problems in the local economy and the well-being of the people. I felt these sections to be very candid and thought provoking. It is only fairly recently that the American population is getting a whiff of what other countries think about us, and I have to be honest in saying that sometimes we do come across as a bullying and exploitative group. Umrigar shows this in her writing without name calling and ostracising, and in her efforts to humanize these issues, makes her point very eloquently.I found the relationship between Frank and Ramesh to be very puzzling at first. Frank, a grown man, was constantly searching out the young boy to play and study with, ignoring his wife's protests and reservations. Upon closer inspection, I began to see that Frank was actually trying to recreate the life of his son, using the young boy as a stand-in. What was once strange became harrowing when Frank's obsession began to grow out of control. His usurping of Ramesh, despite the anger of the boy's father, seemed at first selfish and then began to become alarming. As Frank's preoccupation with the boy grows, his life begins to spin out of control, first at work and then at home with Ellie. I felt like Frank was more than a little mentally unbalanced, though he managed to hide his true intentions and feelings from almost everyone, including Ramesh.The end of the book had a pretty substantial twist that left my mouth dry and my heart pounding. It is at this point that Frank has become totally unhinged and makes some choices that not only leave lasting repercussions, but also change the barometer of the story. Umrigar effortlessly turns the tide in her tale from a quiet and thoughtful character study into a full-fledged and riveting drama. Watching Frank turn from a seemingly benign father figure and husband into a cold and calculating schemer turned my insides cold and left me feeling a sense of dread that was fully realized at the story's conclusion. Umrigar dealt a forceful blow in her tale and the story never felt any less organic for all her skillful manipulations of the narrative.I think this book has a lot of cross-genre appeal and that many would find the story hard to put down. With her clear and concise writing and her expert handling of emotional and charged situations, Umrigar manages to create a powerful and energetic story that both engages and frightens with it's believability. I also think that those who enjoy Indian fiction would love this book, despite its focus on American characters. I know that this book is one that I will definitely read again, with an eye towards monitoring Frank's downward spiral more closely. A unique and tense read. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      Thrity Umrigar's The Weight of Heaven is a heavy with grief, emptiness, and struggle. The Bentons (Ellie and Frank) lose their son, Benny, at age seven from meningococcus. Ellie has liberal leanings politically and is a therapist to clients in Ann Arbor, Mich., while Frank is a proud, American business executive with residual issues of abandonment. The loss of a child can be daunting for any family, and it is clear how grief of this magnitude can slowly rip a family apart."And now they were two. Benny was gone. What was left behind was mockery -- objects and memories that mocked their earlier, smug happiness. Benny was gone, an airplane lost behind the clouds, but he left behind a trail of smoke a mile long:" (Page 2)As this American couple struggles with the loss of their son, Ellie and Frank embark on a new life in India when Frank is transferred to a new HerbalSolutions factory. The distance between them had gaped wide by this point, and both hope that the experience will help them repair their relationship and bring them closer to one another. However, in rural India with its impoverished population, Frank and Ellie find that their values change and their current circumstances and grief dictate their reactions to one another, their servants, the local community, and other expatriates."Now she was trying to control the sway of her hips, trying hard to resist the tug of the pounding drums that were making her lose her inhibitions, making her want to dance manically, the way she used to in nightclubs when she was in her teens. But that was the beauty of the dandiya dance -- it celebrated the paradoxical joy of movement and restraint, of delirium within a structure. This was not about individual expression but about community." (Page 220)Readers will be absorbed by the local community and its traditions, the struggles of the Benton's servants, and the stark beauty of India. But what really makes this novel shine is the characters and their evolution from idealistic college students and young parents to a grief-stricken and dejected married couple in a foreign nation. The tension between Frank and Ellie is personified in the dichotomous views each character reveals to the reader about the Indian community from the lax work environment and labor disputes at Frank's factory to the deep-rooted sense of community and communion with nature shown through Ellie's interactions with individuals at a local clinic.The Weight of Heaven is more than a novel about grief; it is about how grief can distort perception and push people to make life-changing decisions that can broaden their horizons and transform them forever. Umrigar's prose is poetic and full of imagery that paints a vivid picture of India and its rural community and its city life in Mumbai/Bombay. Class differences, the struggles of American expatriates, grief, death, and marital woes are explored deftly in this novel, and it is clearly one of the best novels of 2010.
    • 4/5
      Thrity Umrigar has written another amazing novel. The prose is excellent and the character development superb. A couple who lose their young son are devastated but deal with the loss in different ways. The mother, initially the less likeable of the two, ends up showing strength and courage. The father, initially open and likeable, deteriorates into appalling self absorption and is unable to come to terms with the loss. The culture clash of the young American businessman in India is a well played, if subtle, sub-story. The young American businessman, at the end of the book, after having capitulated to the poor villagers living in the area on the advice of his wife and Indian friends following strikes, remains too self absorbed to feel pity on the poverty striken workforce who he will largely replace with the introduction of some advanced machinery.
    • 4/5
      I have enjoyed other books by this author and did enjoy this one also, although I did think the grief of the parents was overplayed to the point of being maudlin and offputting. The ending was very good and I would recommend this book to certain people.
    • 4/5
      When a couple loses their beloved son, their marriage starts to break up. They move to India, hoping a change of scene will help. The husband becomes obsessed with a bright, but poor, Indian boy, who becomes for him a replacement for his lost son.
    • 3/5
      It is probably impossible for anyone to truly understand the grief that comes with losing a child, but Thrity Umrigar, in her new novel “The Weight of Heaven” does a commendable job of helping the reader feeling the pain, anger and frustration that her characters are suffering through after the death of their seven-year-old son, Benny. To escape constant reminders of their son, Frank and Ellie Benton accept a job in India, hoping that a change in location will bring with it a change in attitude. Ellie embraces the colors, tastes and sumptuous sensations of India. She makes friends and meets locals through her volunteer work at a neighborhood clinic. Frank quickly becomes entranced with young Ramesh, the son of their maid and cook, and manages to avoid thinking about the negative impact HerbalSolutions, the company he works for, has had on the lives of the locals. As Frank and Ellie become more involved with the inequities of class distinctions that surround them, the strife and discord of the community become a perfect reflection of the seeming unfairness of life. Frank’s interest in Ramesh quickly flows from kindness to obsession and Ellie must walk an emotional tightrope in trying to reason with Frank. Too much pressure and she will seem hardhearted, too little and Frank may upset the precarious balance of Ramesh’s true family. “The Weight of Heaven” might go just a bit too far in demonstrating how far a person’s grief can lead them, but the provocative choices the characters make will provide great discussion points for interested book clubs.
    • 3/5
      I got this as a freebie advance copy. So far, the tone is quite dark, almost bleak, as it depicts a couple struggling to accept the sudden death of their 7 year old son. They also struggle to fit into the cultural context as Americans in modern India.