Selection Day: A Novel

Ok, I had this whole messy review written out. And I didn’t like any of it… So, I’m going to make this one simple.Selection Day: The story of two young men from the slums of Mumbai who are pushed by their father to become cricket stars.Pros:In depth look at youth sports (cricket)Relationships: Father and sons. Sibling Rivalry. Mentors/ Sponsors and athletes.A trip to Mumbai.Adiga’s style. Jumpy/ character exploration/ language.Themes of coming of age, emerging sexuality, sports.Cons:Adiga’s style can be dividing. If you liked White Tiger, you will be ok with this.Can meander at times, and the ending was a little flat.The language, especially the cricket/ sports idioms can be hard to follow.I picked this one up for several reasons: I really enjoyed Adiga’s first book, White Tiger. Selection Day is being turned in a Netflix series (I don’t know why that’s a magnet for me…). And it was on sale on Amazon.

Selection Day is set in Mumbai (Bombay), India, where ‘cricket is every Indian boy’s dream.’ Science-obsessed Manjunath Kumar is fourteen years old, and almost as good a cricketer as his older brother Radha. He fears no-one except his stern cricket-obsessed father, offering cricketing advice.On selection day, when Manju is 16 years old, both brothers, Radha and Manju, were competing for a position on the team. What was Manju’s plan? There was father’s advice to get as many runs as possible. Their father has a favourite son, a special son, and the sons have a special obsession. For Manju, is it science or is it cricket? On selection day, Manju must face, not only the incoming balls trying to get him out, but also his life-changing decisions.If readers like the sport of cricket, they will like this novel of obsessions, dreams, family favourites, expectations, peer pressure, choices, dedication, love relationships. and wayward distractions. Its themes of brotherly competition, external circumstances, and paternal love are explored in a fascinating way, to make this an entertaining novel.

Selection day is the third Arvid Adiga book I have read. Honestly, I wasn't sure to pick it up as I thought that he lost the literary touch from the first book, The White Tiger, that won him Pulitzer Prize when he wrote the second book The Last Man In the Tower.Selection day is a vindication of why Adiga won prize for his first book. The story, set in Mumbai, India is about two boys trying to make it big in the game of cricket. The story manifests several flavors and thought provoking literature (like Revenge is the capitalism of poor), but what stuck me the most was the character of penniless, overbearing father with a loveless life with only goal to ensure that his children succeed and not live the life of a "chutney seller" that he endures, but in the wake of doing so, he mentors them so closely that he not only takes cricket but all the other decisions for then (like restricting the boys to shave to avoid tampering with cricket hormones) This drives both the boys away from him, (the younger one completely out of sight) to the point that both don't even wish well for him.Tragedy is the theme of this novel. There is a portrayal of dire life of slums and how passion for a sport can be a panacea and can give hope in the most desperate times, but story meets a tragic end to show how all this passion gets wasted.Representation of unfulfilled life of the father laboring to earn money and shades of his unsuccessful attempts to earn respect in close relationships is touching. The coach's desire before dying to see the younger brother to play at a state level metaphors how life doesn't even give opportunities to say goodbye and allows one last momentAll is all a novel definitely worth reading, and in my opinion it has classic Adiga written all over it.

Unlike the White Tiger and the Last Man in Tower, this new novel is clumsy. At times it's projected as Cain vs. Abel story, then as that of a boy resisting his homosexuality. Setting a man free in modern Bombay is a captivating undertone but its ending is lose.

Fabulous read!

I haven't read Adiga's other books, but now I would like to. I know nothing about cricket, but that didn't keep me from enjoying the several strands of the plot. Unlike another reviewer, I didn't find the characters hard to understand, but I did find several of them richly portrayed, and the complexities of the main character and his own identify question--gay or not gay?--are especially well done. Lots of information about Indian society packed into the book so that the characters are also in a rich context. You might need a little patience to get through all the cricket stuff, but it will be rewarded.

Aravind Adiga wrote two masterpieces: "The White Tiger" and "Last Man in Tower." I will never forget either for their tension, characters, and storytelling. His other novels and non-fiction have been compelling as well. Unfortunately, I think I will forget "Selection Day."It is the story of two boys destined for cricket greatness, pushed on by their obsessive father. Both boys are new to the city and struggling to figure out social, academic, and sporting life. There narrative is normally quick and well-paced, but there are several times where critical plot-points are barely mentioned, causing me to think I misread or perhaps lost my bookmark.By the middle of the book, the ending was perhaps a bit predictable and a five page addendum added nothing. The glossary of cricket terms revealed that "Selection Day" was something of a romance for Adiga. He clearly loves the sport. I wonder if he wanted to write a book about cricket instead of a book about characters.Reviews of Adiga work always mention the urban setting and the graphic depictions of Mumbai. That is true here, but I wonder if these mentions are more the result of Western readers like me being unfamiliar with the city and given easy but understandable descriptions the rich-poor divide.Despite swinging and missing on this book, Adiga's centuries will stand for all time.

I was captivated by Arvid with White Tiger and disappointed by his failure to finish strong with Assassination. This was the same.

This is a gripping story that is slow to get underway but really grabs you into total absorption by the time it ends. A very moving story of a young man’s struggle with himself and his father that is never fully resolved.

Interessantes Buch über eine mir völlig unbekannte Welt (und einen unbekannten sport). Allein das macht das Buch lesenswert wenn auch der Funke nicht ganz überspringt. Zu schematisch sind die Charaktere und teilweise plätschert die Geschichte etwas vor sich hin.

The book was easy to read but I found it hard to get into it. At our book club meeting some of the ladies enjoyed it. One lady had been to India and understood the humour in this book. I've just finished it, and everything tied up in the end. But dare I say it was a bit drawn out, although the characters were portrayed well.

In 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 definitely setup to fail. The above lines capture the wretched transformation in a game "invented by medieval shepherds" which has been corrupted beyond recognition from the gentleman’s game it used to be.Having said that this is not just a cricket book but the story of modern India told through its most popular game. Since the game now cuts across classes and reaches new audiences and participants alike it is a great lens through which to look at the country as a whole. Hence the corruption in the game is a mirror to the corruption that infects the body-politic of the nation at large.Aravind Adiga as in his master piece 'The White Tiger' manages to capture the voice of the aspirational underclass of the country who have migrated to the big city and demand their share of the prosperity pie. This time though this happens through the agency of two brothers who have migrated from a village in the Karnataka coast along with their father who amidst selling chutney in Bombay spots the natural talent of his boys for Cricket and then pushes them into the game. So unlike ‘The White Tiger’ the aspiration here of the two boys is forced by the obsessive father.The father Mohan Kumar wants to develop his elder son Radha into the 'best batsman in the world' and the younger and more complex son Manju the 'second best batsman in the world' using his home-grown eccentric techniques (“No shaving until Twenty-one”). In steps Tommy Sir who has a lifelong dream to uncover one real talent who will make it to the Indian national team before he dies. Tommy Sir also introduces the family to the visionary entrepreneur Anand Mehta whose vision is to support young cricketers with a monthly stipend in return for a portion of their marketing revenue when they make it to the big stage. Anand Mehta is himself the son of a wealthy stock broker who has rebelled against his father and gone to the US and on his return spends his time squandering the family wealth by investing in flop schemes. But with this new vision of sponsoring budding cricketers he thinks he can fulfil his lifelong ambition of gaining entry into the exclusive business club of Bombay. He is also given to spouting insightful social commentary on modern India. Sample this:“Indians, my dear are basically a sentimental race with high cholesterol levels. Now that the hunger for social realist melodrama is no longer satisfied by the Hindi cinema, the Indian public is turning to cricket.”At one point Mehta says that Cricket is essentially 'state-sponsored lobotomy' and its chivalrous ways are ideally suited for male social control especially in a country where the sex ratio is so skewed. So the only way to maintain the sanity of the nation wrecked by this crisis of masculinity and to keep the "rogue Hindu testosterone" in check is "Bread and Tendulkar" and hence a steady dose of live cricket. Such observations make you realize the social impact of the game on the country which might be bigger than even Football’s impact on Brazil.The elder boy Radha is indeed the protégé but soon Manju overtakes him much to the displeasure of the elder brother. But what everyone fails to notice is to ask whether Manju himself wants to play the game. Manju himself is much more interested in Science and forensic science at that in the mould of TV series CSI. So he halfheartedly takes to the game and perhaps for this reason does not feel any stress and this ironically makes him excel in the game.Manju also has his growth pangs as he is ambivalent about his sexuality and this reaches a head when he meets an equally talented but disinterested in the game cricketer, Javed Ansari. J.A. as he is fondly called makes Manju question whether he loves the game at all or he plays it in fear of his maniacal father. He tethers between the poles while answering this question and in the end his indecision leads to his tragic fall to mediocrity. Radha on the other hand feels fate has been unkind to him and blames Manju for usurping his space. The father in the end feels if the God of cricket Subramanya he trusts "gave one boy the talent and the other the desire". This adds up to a tragic climax for each of the protagonists and the boys themselves realize all too late that they have "martyred ourselves to mediocrity'.If anger marked ‘The White Tiger’ then fear marks this novel. As Manju’s father is driven not just by the desire of the riches but also from fear of what will happen if his sons do not succeed and as the end shows this can lead to nothing but tragedy.Adiga also revels in biting satire as in when he says:'Nothing is illegal in India. Because, technically, everything is illegal in India... See how it works?'Or'Revenge is the capitalism of the poor: conserve the original wound, defer immediate gratification, fatten the first insult with new insults, invest and reinvest spite, and keep waiting for the perfect moment to strike back'Or when he describes the boys' father :“Because Kumar’s eyes had in them what Anand Mehta called a ‘pre-liberalization stare’, an intensity of gaze common in people of the lower class before 1991, when the old socialist economy was in place”This is genius in one line!There is also a rejoinder from the man to his critics who panned his first novel for bashing the dreamy eyed Indian middle class:'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. Keep this in mind before you do any business in the country'Personally for me this novel is also a depiction of millions of Indian kids who lose their childhood in pursuit of the goals set by their over-ambitious parents who do not care about their real ambitions and in the process manage to push them into a life they do not want but who still labor on courageously knowing well that they might end up as tragedies.So in the end this is the work of a genius, our own Flaubert who dissects the hypocrisies and ironies of modern Indian life like no other!