Paul Bryant's Reviews > The Financial Expert

(Note – this may be a little tiny bit spoilerish)

THE WAY THINGS WERE IN INDIA IN THE 1940s

1. A guy will spend years writing a long book about sexual health in marriage, knowing that it will be a big hit when published, and when he meets a total stranger one day he will whimsically sell him his manuscript for whatever cash the guy has in his pockets (a few rupees) and the total stranger will take the manuscript and get it published and become rich and the author will never ask for any royalties, not even when he meets the random guy again later on. And no one will ever mention the total unfairness or borderline insanity of such an occurrence.

2. A 15 year old son will run away from his family because of a fight with his annoying father, and the parents, realising he has gone, will fall into despair, weeping and wailing, but they will never think of asking the police to find their son. In fact they will not make even the feeblest attempt to trace him. It seems registering a teenager as a missing person is not something anyone would do.

3. After the income from the sex book dies down, the guy thinks hmmm I need a job, I know, I will become a financial expert and get everyone to lend me their cash. How can I do this? Of course! I will offer my customers 25% interest when the bank only offers 5%! So this is an offer the whole town of Malgudi cannot refuse and they shower our guy with all their stashed cash caches and lo! they get their 25% and everything is peachy. How this guy is able to do such a thing, what he does with all the money to be able to afford such a Himalayan altitude of interest, is not explained. Maybe it was only ever a Ponzi scheme. Who knows. Maybe R K Narayan didn’t quite know either.

4. Everybody’s fortunes randomly rise and fall as if they were the playthings of gods who were high as kites on lsd.

This is the 6th RK Narayan novel I have read and I think that’s enough. The two best ones were The Dark Room and The Painter of Signs. I have concluded that he is a little bit hit or miss. But he is a very affable, friendly writer.