I am keeping a promise to myself to write a mouthshut review of this book when I read it almost 3 months back. So please pardon me if I gloss over the facts. The review is kept at a high level and I wont get much into the plot itself. There are many more reviews which do that.
I borrowed this book from my niece with high hopes after it won the Booker prize. The story itself is quite readable. Though I was not gripped by it in a "un-put-down able" fashion, I was picking it up whenever I was free until I finished it.
The presentation was interesting and novel to me with the story told in a flashback via letters to the Chinese premier with plenty of teasers right at the start itself. However, it does seem contrived when you consider the full story in hindsight. Who would sit and write such detailed letters to the Chinese Premier? Quite absurd really.
The author has successfully shown the futility of being born into poverty. One has very few means of coming out of it using legal means which I am sure is true in many countries. We also get a window into the life of the ultra-rich and their ways as viewed, experienced and felt by such persons.
How the poor may think of unfair decisions, drunkenness, immorality etc., is narrated by the author in the form the main character Balram Halwai. A view from the other side of the fence so to speak.
However, the rich is narrowly defined in the characters of the landlords for whom Balram works as a driver. They are obviously a very corrupt lot who have all kinds of connections and will stoop to anything to make a buck.
One of them is a recently returned NRI who is nice to begin with but under constant training by his family will start to toe the line. I would guess a very small percentage would really fit into the depiction that is given in the book. This is where I found the book mostly written with the agenda of India bashing.
The author has chosen to highlight all the pre-conceived notions of India, its poverty, class-conflicts, corruption, bad infrastructure, with very little to balance it out. It seems to feed people who want to believe only negative things about life in India and refuse to see anything else. I could not see the author even make an attempt at this and that was disappointing.
Finally, a novel is a story or an idea that the author wants to convey and we cannot fault that regardless of our opinion on the matter. If you are one who likes to look at all that’s wrong with India and get that satisfying "I knew it" or "I told you so" kind of feeling, then this book is for you. If you hate to see people keep pointing fingers at all the known problems in India without really suggesting possible solutions, then just avoid this book.