An undisciplined debut, but one with plenty of vitality.
What makes an entrepreneur in today’s India? Bribes and murder, says this fiercely satirical first novel.
Balram Halwai is a thriving young entrepreneur in Bangalore, India’s high-tech capital. China’s Premier is set to visit, and the novel’s frame is a series of Balram’s letters to the Premier, in which he tells his life story. Balram sees India as two countries: the Light and the Darkness. Like the huddled masses, he was born in the Darkness, in a village where his father, a rickshaw puller, died of tuberculosis. But Balram is smart, as a school inspector notices, and he is given the moniker White Tiger. Soon after, he’s pulled out of school to work in a tea shop, then manages to get hired as a driver by the Stork, one of the village’s powerful landlords. Balram is on his way, to Delhi in fact, where the Stork’s son, Mr. Ashok, lives with his Westernized wife, Pinky Madam. Ashok is a gentleman, a decent employer, though Balram will eventually cut his throat (an early revelation). His business (coal trading) involves bribing government officials with huge sums of money, the sight of which proves irresistible to Balram and seals Ashok’s fate. Adiga, who was born in India in 1974, writes forcefully about a corrupt culture; unfortunately, his commentary on all things Indian comes at the expense of narrative suspense and character development. Thus he writes persuasively about the so-called Rooster Coop, which traps family-oriented Indians into submissiveness, but fails to describe the stages by which Balram evolves from solicitous servant into cold-blooded killer. Adiga’s pacing is off too, as Balram too quickly reinvents himself in Bangalore, where every cop can be bought.
An undisciplined debut, but one with plenty of vitality.Pub Date: April 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-6259-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Searing fiction with the lived-in feel of the best memoir.
A torturer-in-hiding examined from multiple angles by family and victims.
In this third novel from Danticat (The Farming of Bones, 1998, etc.), the past has a way of intruding on everyday life no matter how all of the characters try to stop it. Of course, when the past is as horrific as it is here, that should come as no surprise. The title comes from a Haitian term for torturer, the black-hearted Tonton Macoutes who enforced the Duvalier regime (“ ‘They’d also come before dawn, as the dew was settling on the leaves, and they’d take you away’ ”). The particular dew breaker at the heart of this story is an old man when we first meet him, on a trip he’s taking with his artist daughter down to Florida to deliver a sculpture she’d been commissioned to make by a famous Haitian-American actress. Each chapter brings another view of this same man, who escaped his crimes in Haiti to hide out as a barber in Brooklyn, and each is related by different people who knew him—his wife, a lover, one of his victims. The structure, however, isn’t necessarily one of slowly revealed mystery, an approach that could have cheapened the tale’s formidable emotional impact. Even though we learn more and more about the dew breaker as the story progresses—and by the end have been firsthand witnesses to his foul methods—Danticat seems ultimately less interested in him than in those around him, those who speak personally about the suffering he caused. It’s a wise choice, in that there is comparatively little that can be learned from practitioners of evil, whose motives usually come down to simple desires for money or power. Danticat’s voice is that of a seasoned veteran, her pages wise and saddened, struggling on “the pendulum between regret and forgiveness.”
Searing fiction with the lived-in feel of the best memoir.Pub Date: March 15, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4114-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
A suspenseful story that examines how families haunt each other in life and death; possibly too creepy for late-night...
A college professor returns to his hometown and confronts figurative and literal demons from his childhood in this modern-day ghost story.
The novel opens as Will Conner attends a faculty-student mixer in Manhattan and talks with his teaching assistant, Beth, about the return of some disturbing dreams he’s been having. The dreams contain flashbacks to a confusing night from his youth when his mother hosted a “spirit circle” in their home. Beth tries, unsuccessfully, to help Will understand the dreams. As Will walks home after the event, he receives a visit from an unearthly being, a demon or spirit, perhaps a hallucination, he’s not sure. He hurries the rest of the way to his apartment, where he is greeted by a ringing telephone and the news that his mother is in the hospital, unconscious. Will returns to his small New England hometown to care for his mother, who suffered a head injury. During his visit, he reconnects with a long list of characters from his childhood and tries to determine what happened on that fateful night from his youth that continues to haunt his dreams. Will begins to detect secrets about the people he grew up with and how those secrets may have impacted his own life. Yet, every time he moves closer to discovering the central mystery, another obstacle materializes to thwart his efforts and make him question his path. Written in a fast-paced, colloquial prose, the text will pull readers in right from the start. Drawing on New England’s historical connection to witchcraft and mob hysteria, the author brings to life contemporary covens and small-town reactions to the unexplainable. Despite the novel’s heavy emphasis on flashbacks and retelling of family folklore, which can feel overly convoluted, the author creates nuanced and realistic interpersonal relationships that lend much-needed grounding to this darkly supernatural story. Equal parts engaging and creepy, this twisty tale deftly examines how secrets and regret can continue to reverberate through generations.
A suspenseful story that examines how families haunt each other in life and death; possibly too creepy for late-night reading.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-335-21755-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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