Selection Day

by Aravind Adiga

Manjunath Kumar is fourteen and living in a slum in Mumbai. He knows he is good at cricket--if not as good as his older brother Radha. But there are many other things about himself and the world that he doesn't know. Sometimes it even seems as though everyone has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself. And when Manju meets Radha's great rival, a mysterious Muslim boy privileged and confident in all the ways Manju is not, he is forced to come to terms with who he really is.

• ISBN10: 1501150839
• ISBN13: 9781501150838
• Publish Date: 3 January 2017 (first published 16 August 2016)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Imprint: Scribner Book Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Lianne]

I was approved an ARC of this book by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at my blog, eclectic tales: http://eclectictales.insanitysandwich.com/blog/2017/01/10/review-selection-day/

Now, I was pretty excited when I initially agreed to read this book for review: set in India, a story about family with the running theme of cricket, a sport I have never truly understood nor learnt about, but especially the family dynamic aspect of the novel. Unfortunately I found that for most of the novel, the characters and the family were apart so whilst the shadow of each other’s personalities and achievements weighed down on the other characters, there weren’t as many confrontations or scenes together as I thought there would have.

I also wished I understood cricket more–I thought the book would sort of enlighten me a bit about the game and how it works, but I finished the book feeling even more confused than ever before =/

Overall, whilst Selection Day had great ideas and a great premise, I felt like perhaps there was too many things going on: a coming of age story, family dynamics amongst a strict single father and two rivalling sons in dreams and ability, sexuality, class/religion…In the end I just didn’t feel for the story nor truly cared for the characters.