Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam, 349 pages

Nearing his seventh decade of life, Professor Chandra has once again failed to win the Nobel Prize for economics, despite being a front runner yet again. While he's outwardly cheerful, Chandra is depressed, wondering what he did wrong — not only in the eyes of the Nobel committee, but also to have such strained relationships with his children, one of whom has not spoken to him for years. Add in a few health problems, and Chandra soon finds himself being sent, somewhat against his will, to a spiritual retreat by his ex-wife's new husband.

There's something both very real, in that relationships between spouses and between parents and their children certainly become strained if everyone is afraid to say what they want and what they don't. Yes, some soul-searching is often required, and perhaps it does take drastic measures to jump-start that process. That said, a few of the characters came off a bit two-dimensional, and I didn't feel particularly sympathetic to anyone, least of all Chandra. Not a bad book, just not one in which I fell in love with the characters.