Selection Day is a captivating, witty novel by the Man Booker Prize winning author of The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga.
'The most exciting novelist writing in English today' A. N. Wilson
One of the New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2017"
Manjunath Kumar is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket - if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling and is fascinated by the world of CSI and by curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know . . . Sometimes it seems as though everyone around him has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself.
When Manju begins to get to know Radha's great rival, a boy as privileged and confident as Manju is not, everything in Manju's world begins to change and he is faced with decisions that will challenge both his sense of self and of the world around him . . .
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.
