Selection Day

From the slums of Mumbai, a father strongly encourages his two sons to excel at cricket and become selected for the team.Aravind puts the reader in the picture about modern day life in India and you get the feel of Mumbai with the contrasts between the slums and the flash wealthy parts I enjoyed the local colour and the reflections of the father who had moved from a rural Indian village to the vibrant city of Mumbai.But this story is a drag and very ordinary It has your usual hopes of the father [...]

Americans know about Quidditch than they do about cricket, but there must be magic in both games Although the British import struck out against baseball on these shores sometime in the 19th century, readers here have shown themselves willing to tolerate wickets and stumps if the writing is good enough After all, Joseph O Neill s Netherland attracted an appreciative audience in his adopted United States and went on to win the PEN Faulkner Award in 2009 And now Americans should venture onto the f [...]

Exploring the great nastinessIn the middle of the novel Tommy Sir, the talent scout scouring the maidans of Bombay who was given to the truth as some men are to drink ruefully says this about the game he loves How did this thing, our shield and chivalry, our Roncesvalles and Excalibur, go over to the other side and become part of the great nastiness Tommy Sir is the puritan fan who believes in old world virtues of principles and righteousness hence does not fit into the modern world and is defin [...]

Selection Day is a coming of age story about two talented young brothers, Radha and Manju Kumar, as they train to become professional cricket players Living in the slums of India with their legit crazy and domineering father, they are desperate to get out Their cricket skills eventually get noticed by scouters and then by a rich businessman who offers to sponsor them if they agree to train with a renowned coach in the hopes that at least one of them will be selected to play on a professional tea [...]

For about a hundred fifty years a little before 1800 to the middle of the twentieth century the British Empire militarily got the drop on most of India, and while they systematically looted it while the looting was good, India, as had been its very long habit, absorbed what it liked of English culture and language, and discarded the rest.One of the things it absorbed was the sport cricket This novel s elevator pitch is poor Indian father is obsessed with making his two sons into cricket stars Bu [...]

Novel started off with two brothers from Mumbai trying hard to become the best batsman in the world But somewhere in the middle it changed direction for no reason and went on to describe the sexual identity crisis of one of them In the end, it neither had detailing about cricket nor about sexual identity issues I am still confused what this novel is about.I had high expectation of this book as it was marketed as a novel about two brothers in Mumbai trying to make big in cricket which is a very i [...]

This was such a nightmare Literally struggled to reach the finish line Had picked this for the love of cricket But each and every character is so much convoluted Read this during a reading slump, and this only contributed to itWhy I hated it Abstract narration The booker kind Twisted characters could have been fun But somehow these became depressing.

What we Indians want in literature, at least the kind written in English, is not literature at all, but flattery We want to see ourselves depicted as soulful, sensitive, profound, valorous, wounded, tolerant and funny beings All that Jhumpa Lahiri stuff But the truth is, we are absolutely nothing of that kind What are we, then We are animals of the jungle, who will eat our neighbor s children in five minutes, and our own in ten.I ve long been a fan of Indian literature shaped by a long and compl [...]

There s beauty in cricket, which we Indians understand deeply Even though our national game is hockey, we live and breathe cricket And Aravind Adiga s new novel Selection Day is centered around this passionate sport only A mix of beating class hierarchy, rags to riches dreams, jealousies and parental pressure, Selection Day makes up for a brilliant read.The story of Selection day is about Mohan Kumar, a father who believes that his sons, Radha and Manju will one day become either Bradman or Tend [...]

The word I would use to describe this book is Disappointing I have enjoyed Adiga s books in the past but this one just does not measure up While the book allegedly is about Selection Day in the sport of cricket in India, it appears to really be a story about sexual identity, with the antagonist being a truly horrible person named Javed, whose sole purpose in life is to tempt the protagonist Manju away from Cricket, his family and draw him into a gay relationship The first part of the book is pre [...]

Aravind Adiga is an author who knocks on the door of an Indian at 2 am and present them as they open it disoriented, with bad hair, in their probably torn nightclothes without any makeup Not the best way to present but then there is an element of honesty in it what we Indians want in literature, at least the kind written in English, is not literature at all but flattery We want to see ourselves depicted as soulful, sensitive, profound, valorous, wounded, tolerant and funny beings All that Jhupa [...]

Adiga, the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner, centres his latest novel around the cult of cricket in the nation of India When the game was first introduced to the country, the Indians despised it Now it has a powerful hold on millions of lives It is this power that causes upheavals for the various male characters in the book At its centre is Manju, the younger brother of a talented teenage batsman called Radha Kumar Unfortunately for Radha, Manju appears to have even talent for the game The boys fat [...]

novel based in bombay and using the background of cricket its about sibling relationships and those with their cricket mad father and relationships with others as hint of homosexuality with one of the other cricketers.

I very much enjoyed Adiga s previous novels, The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower They seemed to open up India to me in a compelling and inclusive way But this one, unfortunately I found problematic The story of two brothers with exceptional cricketing skill urged on by their ambitious father is a compelling enough story in itself, but I found the characters hard to relate to The father in particular seemed a stereotype and his foibles and frailties simply laughable rather than empathetic The [...]

Even though, on a first glance, Aravind Adiga s Selection Day represents the Cricket Mania in India, it is much deeper than just Cricket I, personally do not like cricket And was hoping to hate this book where as I found the story too interesting to quit even though there was cricket in it.Pressurized by the Father, Radha and Manju, dreams to become cricketers The father who constantly bullies and abuses their sons, has made a contract with God that his son s will be the best and second best bat [...]

A brilliant chronicler of the contemporary Indian society, Aravind Adiga, whose lacerating stories never fail to make an impact, has chosen India s national obsession cricket as his shovel this time to excavate a fresh batch of unsettling truths that we ve chosen so far to blissfully ignore His previous novel The Last Man in Tower was a shocking mirror of the Indian middle class, a tale that might have been easily true, that reflected the horrifying lengths to which greed could drive humans.Sele [...]

The Gentleman s Game India A country said to have two real religions cinema and cricket Two brothers are being groomed by their father to become the greatest cricketers in India Radha, the elder, with his film star looks and love of the game, is the better of the two, and it s accepted that he will be the star But as they grow up, Radha s skill diminishes, just a little, but enough for him to be eclipsed by the younger Manju, whose attitude to the game is ambivalent Their mother having disappea [...]

Usually I don t write reviews of books that I do not enjoy, but this is an exception.This book was awful, with no redeeming features, it was 1 Poorly structured2 Had characters who were not properly fleshed out3 Verbose4 Homophobic5 Unrealistic dialoge even considering the main characters were teenage boys.I was given a copy of this book by the publisher for an honest review.

I can t believe that I m giving a book by Aravind Adiga only two stars, but that s the best I can do It was a chore to finish this book, and I don t think that that was only due to my total ignorance about cricket and my indifference to it Like 4 3 2 1, I couldn t get interested in any of the characters Manju was better than the rest, but the fact that the focus of the narrative constantly shifted to others prevented him from becoming the unifying element of the novel for me.

I m not sure what tennis coach and father of champion siblings, Richard Williams, thinks about this book, but I loved it The ambitious father in this book is Mohan Kumar, who trains his sons Radha and Manju to be the best and second best batsmen in the world or close to it, the best in the Mumbai school cricket league using a mixture of determination, superstition and rituals, and presumably quite a lot of ability.This is Aravind Adiga, so we should know the novel is going to be satirical and fu [...]

didn t really get to me

Fantastic as all of his books have been Still so much to digest after just finishing it I kept wanting to talk to my wife about it but she will read it and I don t want to spoil any of it Just go read it and tell me what you think

Protagonist Manju struggles with familial societal expectations regarding a possible cricket career a way out of the slum and heterosexuality He longs to go to college but he also longs to play cricket He smashes against his abusive father s expectations, his rebellious older brother, and his love hate relationship with a privileged young man he desires Homophobia runs through the book and remains unaddressed the characters don t grow Meh LitsyAtoZ LetterS 2.5 stars

How was my reading experience It was like having a bad but expensive coffee Having purchased an expensive coffee you would feel obliged to have that coffee, sometimes irrespective of how bad it tastes But once you finish drinking it, it leaves such a bad taste that you feel you should have thrown it after the first sip That s exactly my experience with the book.What was the book about Barely few pages into the book I felt the author has decided to show India, its society etc in bad light The boo [...]

It is disappointing to see bullshit like One Indian Girl gathering a media storm when real gems of Indian literature, like Aravind Adiga s Selection Day go unnoticed Adiga can rightfully claim the throne of the king of modern Indian fiction, with his satirical novels on the 21st century Indian society always managing to strike a chord with me My review might be heavily biased as Adiga s first book, The White Tiger, made me like what this man had to say, Last Man In Tower made me in love with his [...]

disappointing as i had been anticipating this new novel quite a bit.DNF stopped reading at page 98 as my interest just wasn t being held and i found the prose stilted and dry perhaps it s the timing of the read may return to it at a later time maybe for now, just really not enjoying it at all advanced review copy provided by simon schuster canada, with thanks and appreciation, in return for an honest review.

I thought I d like it, but the style isn t working for me and , turns out I m not interested in stories about 14 year old boys playing cricket right now, at least, and to be fair, that s only part of the story.

Thank you for making this title available Unfortunately, the further I read, the I was convinced that this was not the kind of book that I would enjoy This is no criticism whatsoever of the plot, characters, writing style, setting, or the author Merely a statement of my own preferences.

Becomes incoherent as you read Good premise but lost plot.

Don t get this book if you don t know anything about cricket Really drew me in, I finished it quite quickly Probably not quite as good as the White Tiger but the same tinge of madness in the prose.