The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Published by Hogarth Press
Publication date: September 23, 2025
Genres: Fiction, Cultural, Literary
Bookshop
I love Indian writers and fiction so was very excited for Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, but this story of two strangers from India who have been trying to make life in America work went all kinds of wrong for me.
Sunny’s and Sonia’ families still live in India and are known to each other as neighbors in New Delhi, but the two young people have never met. Sonia is finishing school in Vermont and is in the throes of loneliness so her family convinces his mother to send him an introductory matchmaking proposal. It doesn’t go over well. Instead, Sonia returns to India to try and begin her career as a writer and Sunny ignores not only the letter, but his obsessive mother, who wants him to come home. The majority of the novel follows the two in their respective lives, trying to succeed in their careers while also struggling with their cultural identities and trying to find a place that feels like home.
Loneliness is 688 pages long and took me over a month to read. Not because of the length, but because I kept setting it down and forgetting about it. Despite a timeline of only a few years it felt multi-generational. The cast is sprawling and Desai wants the book to be a character study so each individual’s thoughts and motivations are explored in depth. Sadly, most of them are dreadful and come off as the worst of Indian stereotypes. Particularly the parents who are cartoonish with their smothering, grasping, dismissive, manipulative actions. The same disconnect is echoed in the novel’s plot. At times, it’s literary fiction with deep philosophical passages about India’s history and the destructive aftermath of Partition, but then it shifts into a Bollywood soap opera involving Sunny’s mother and her husband’s family home.
There are always pitfalls in writing long literary fiction, but Desai succeeds with her lush, evocative prose. The novel evokes every space it visits from Goa to NYC to Vermont and rings with the truth of the impact of loneliness, not just on Sonia and Sunny, but on everyone around them. Unfortunately, this tender theme can’t hold up against an unbalanced plot, leaving The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny to collapse under its own weight.
This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I get a small commission (at no cost to you).
*I received a free copy of this book from Hogarth Books in exchange for an honest review.*
Ugh, I’ve been wanting to read this but have been concerned by some of the comments about it. I can’t think of a time where our reading tastes differed so now I’m really wondering how it’s going to be when I pick it up for bookclub later this year.
Bookclub?! It almost 700 pages! Your club must be fast readers. I would be hard-pressed to say anything positive about it.
We skip the month of July so long books are scheduled for August. I guess I’ll just hope for a miracle—-or skip the meeting.
Finally someone who feels the same way I did about this nevel!! Catherine describes perfectly the reading journey……but she stuck it out to the end…at some point around page 550, I decided to quit…I just couldn’t keep up the struggle to stay engaged any longer.
It’s nice to know I wasn’t alone in this because the novel has shown up on so many Best Of lists. A mystery to me.
On to better books!
Same here! It was way too long and I got lost trying to follow the characters. The imaginary monster dog (???) ruined it for me. Beautiful writing but it just felt like a waste of time.
I blocked out the dog! Ugh. You’re exactly right- gorgeous writing, but a mess of a plot.
This Is Not good news! I haven’t tried this novel yet …. but your review doesn’t bode well. Still I might have to give a go sometime. I must admit … I struggle when there’s a really large cast of characters in a novel. ugh.
If they come together with any sort of cohesion it’s not so bad, but these people dipped out for long stretches before reappearing again in a completely different context.