Kiran Desai

That was an uplifting lecture by novelist KIRAN DESAI. I missed her Saturday talk, absentmindedly thinking it was on Sunday instead. Tonight she was present for the reading of the two AUC student short stories that were awarded prizes for the year.

She then gave a humane and wise talk on the necessity of loneliness for writers. There was an autobiographical component to it that one could call “frank” if not that I can’t imagine using as crude a word as “frank” to describe Kiran Desai. Her persona is quietly aristocratic and ethereal. She’s one of those people who seems to float into a room without touching carpet or wood.

She also has a unique ability, as you sit there listening to her, to make you feel liked as a person. Her demeanor is too private to make you feel like a friend, exactly, but you certainly feel afterward as though you could walk right up, introduce yourself, and get a hearing about pretty much any topic.

I’m not far enough into either of her novels yet to form a definite opinion about them, but I’ve certainly become a fan of Kiran Desai as a person. One is overwhelmed by a sense of kindness and goodness.