FEBRUARY 2017 - AudioFile
Narrator Sartaj Garewal lends great charm to Adiga’s engaging and intimate novel. With great sensitivity, Garewal portrays two young brothers who are moving up the ranks of India’s hyper-competitive cricket world. The brothers’ opposing characters form the crux of the novel, and Garewal’s subtle characterizations of them are outshone only by his nuanced depiction of their controlling father. That said, as expert as Garewal is as a character actor, his neglect of Adiga’s powerful descriptive passages is notable. While the intense narratives on the cricket pitch are deftly delivered, the more contemplative moments—Adiga’s true strength as a writer—fall short and are often monotonous. One has the sense that the talented Garewal has more to give to this stunning novel. Z.S. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 11/07/2016
With his brilliant, raw energy ricocheting off of every line, Booker winner Adiga (White Tiger) turns his wry wit and his scrutiny to the youth leagues of cricket in Mumbai, following the successes and failures of teenage brothers Radha Krishna and Manjunath Kumar, who have been both formed and broken by their visionary but abusive father, Mohan. Brought to Mumbai as children after their mother left, the boys have grown up in a “one-room brick shed, divided by a green curtain.” Ever since, they’ve spent every hour hoping and preparing for a different future, which they know depends on their ability to outshine all the other boys on the cricket field. To either help or hinder this process comes a cast of scouts, recruiters, and hangers-on, each of whom is etched with Adiga’s trademark clarity—they are as defined by their fate as they are resentful of it. “Revenge is the capitalism of the poor,” he writes, describing Mohan’s resolve to prove the potential of his sons, as well as their eventual attempts to escape him. But the claim also fuels the energy of the novel as a whole, unraveling the tremendous grit and fierce inner conflicts that come with the pursuit of revenge. Though Radha is known throughout Mumbai as the “best batsman” and Manju the “second best batsman,” this is shockingly upturned, a move from which no one ever quite recovers. Meanwhile, as Manju in particular comes of age, he wrestles with what the sport demands and what he’s willing to sacrifice in turn. (Jan.)
The New Yorker
Energetic… Adiga’s barbed prose deftly skewers India’s tangled religious and class dynamics, and its literary stereotypes.
The New York Times Book Review Marcel Theroux
This is a novel with a broad sweep, accomplished with commendable economy and humor, in a sinewy, compact prose that has the grace and power of a gifted athlete. And it pulses with affection for Mumbai itself; the effortless sociological dissection recalls Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers... Selection Day transcends sport. This is a book about choice and destiny, smothering family ambition and the pull of a young person’s nascent identity. You’re just going to have to trust me that the cricket is worth it.
The Wall Street Journal Sam Sacks
Mr. Adiga writes with customary acerbity and astuteness. Class resentment is the gasoline that fuels the brothers’ ambitions and gives this novel its noisy volatility. The gritty urban realism that animated The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower is again on display…Selection Day churns with the same propulsive energy.
Slate Laura Miller
Many novelists are called Dickensian, but Adiga comes closer than most, albeit with every last speck of Victorian sentimentality suctioned out. His characters are brightly and sharply drawn and animated with great energy; reading about his Mumbai is like taking a double shot of espresso…You need not know anything about cricket in any of its variations to savor Selection Day. In fact, you don’t need to have any interest in sports at all. Cricket serves Adiga as a marvelously flexible metaphor: for the (lost) dream of civic integrity, for tradition and authority, for the contest that is life in a rapidly evolving economy…Class is Adiga’s great theme, and his depiction of its workings in India ranges from the fondly comical to the savage…[a] ferociously brilliant novel.
NPR Annalisa Quinn
Exuberant and incisive…Each sentence flickers like a match with life. Adiga swoops in and out of his characters' inner voices with frightening precision and speed, laying out the paranoia, obsessions, tokens, idols, and self-made prisons of each man in a few bright, laserlike sentences…Richness and rot, decadence and decay, cricket and corruption: These make up Adiga's Mumbai. Selection Day asks: Amidst all this, is there any such thing as freedom?
The Boston Globe Ru Freeman
"Wonderfully original."
The Minneapolis Star Tribune Hamilton Cain
Spirited…the elements of Selection Day are strong throughout: a dramatic, readable arc; satire glinting with hints of tragedy; a witty, vibrant voice.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Mike Fisher
Ambitious… filled with smart, spot-on observations about the perils of growing up.
The Chicago Tribune Michael Upchurch
Adiga writes a prose of crazed energy, bright color and acrobatic logic... comical and searing… Selection Day brings a family, a city and an entire country to scabrous and antic life.
Bustle
"A great read, even if you're not a fan of cricket.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
[A] scathingly satiric novel of modern Indian life…ambitious… smart, spot-on.
starred review Booklist
"A master class in integrating character and landscape... Peppered with dashes of humor, this dark and unflinching story is an unqualified triumph."
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"A captivating and sensitive coming-of-age story that tackles various new themes: the confounding nature of sexuality; the darkness that accompanies excellence and achievement... Adiga’s characters, like his settings, are getting more complex with each book, and this complexity makes his indictment of the contemporary world all the more urgent and convincing."
The Financial Times (UK)
"Sensually told and unpredictably plotted... Adiga's prose has a bustling energy that makes it highly readable."
Sunday Times (UK)
"An engrossing and nuanced coming-of-age novel... Adiga has succeeded in composing a powerful individual story that, at the same time, does justice to life's (and India's) great indeterminacies."--The Sunday Times (UK)
The Times (UK)
"Selection Day is, by any judgment, top-rate fiction from a young master... Adiga’s plot is gripping."
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Adiga is an exceptionally talented novelist, and the subtlety with which he presents the battle between India’s aspirants and its left-behind poor is exceptional.
The Guardian
"A compelling tale of cricket and corruption... A finely told, often moving, and intelligent novel... Adiga has grown in his art since his Booker prizewinning debut, The White Tiger."
The Washington Post Ron Charles
Adiga’s wit and raw sympathy will carry uninitiated readers beyond their ignorance of cricket…Adiga’s paragraphs bounce along like a ball hit hard down a dirt street. One gets the general direction, but the vectors of his story can change at any moment as we chase after these characters…Selection Day evolves into a bittersweet reflection on the limits of what we can select. Choice — that most enticing Western ideal — does not thrive everywhere equally…Adiga’s voice is so exuberant, his plotting so jaunty, that the sadness of this story feels as though it is accumulating just outside our peripheral vision.
The San Francisco Chronicle Carmela Ciuraru
Adiga seems boundlessly gifted once again. He makes beautiful sentences; creates wonderfully eccentric, original characters; and moves his plot along at a brisk pace. There’s energy and wit on every page… Adiga superbly captures the intimacy between the two brothers, as they bicker, tease and protect each other… as Adiga explores themes of ambition, failure, homophobia and threats to freedom — whether on a personal or national level — he has produced a nearly flawless novel, and further proof that he is among our finest contemporary novelists.
The Atlantic Mark Greif
"The best novel I read this year... In its primal triangle of rival brothers and a maniacal father, hell-bent on success in cricket in India, Adiga grips the passions while painting an extraordinary panorama of contemporary sports, greed, celebrity, and mundanity. As a literary master, Adiga has only advanced in his art since his Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger."
New York Times Dwight Garner
Selection Day, Mr. Adiga’s third novel, supplies further proof that his Booker Prize, won for The White Tiger in 2008, was no fluke. He is not merely a confident storyteller but also a thinker, a skeptic, a wily entertainer, a thorn in the side of orthodoxy and cant... Powerful... Soulful... What this novel offers is the sound of a serious and nervy writer working at near the top of his form. Like a star cricket batter, Mr. Adiga stands and delivers, as if for days."
author of Bangkok 8 John Burdett
"Adiga is a global Gorky, a modern Kipling who grew up, and grew up mad. The future of the novel lies with him."
A. N. Wilson
"The most exciting novelist writing in English today."
Entertainment Weekly
Adiga maps out in luminous prose India’s ambivalence toward its accelerated growth, while creating an engaging protagonist . . . a man whose ambition and independence have been tempered with an understanding of the important, if almost imperceptible, difference between development and progress.
The Wall Street Journal
Adiga populates his fiction with characters from all parts of India’s contemporary social spectrum, and the intensity of his anger at aspects of modern India is modulated by his impish wit.
Christian Science Monitor
"Adiga gives readers a well-rounded portrait of Mumbai in all of its teeming, bleating, inefficient glory.
The Economist
"Adiga captures with heartbreaking authenticity the real struggle in Indian cities, which is for dignity.
USA Today
"You simply do not realize how anemic most contemporary fiction is until you read Adiga’s muscular prose. His plots don’t unwind, they surge.
Newsweek
Praise for Aravind Adiga and Selection Day
“Masterful. . . . With his gripping, amusing glimpse into the contradictions and perils of modern India, Adiga has cementedhis reputation as the preeminent chronicler of his country’s messy present.
Library Journal
01/01/2017
The Kukke Subramanya Temple in Western Ghats existed long before cricket, but in 2006 it was linked to "the god of cricket," Sachin Tendulkar, who spent three days there. Every summer, Mohan Kumar drags his sons Manju and Redha to the temple, convinced that for them cricket is the ticket out of the Mumbai slums and that Subramanya will make one of his boys the next Tendulkar. Both boys suffer under the bizarre training regime created by their bullying, unstable father, and elder son Radha is groomed to be the future star batsman for India. The boys get a sponsorship deal funded by expat, get-rich-quick chancer Anand Mehta, and the family uses the monthly allowance to move from a one-room shack to a real apartment. At their new school, the boys are prepped for Selection Day, a high-stakes cricket match where young players are chosen to join the professional leagues, under-19 division. Competition between the brothers and Manju's feelings for a fellow cricketer cause problems with the master plan. Readers who don't know what a batsman or a bowler is will be familiar by the end of this novel because there is a lot of cricket—too much for a book that is not really about sports but about the tension between success and identity and loyalty and freedom. VERDICT Recommended with reservations; committed readers will find a solid story between the wickets. [See Prepub Alert, 7/22/16.]—Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD
FEBRUARY 2017 - AudioFile
Narrator Sartaj Garewal lends great charm to Adiga’s engaging and intimate novel. With great sensitivity, Garewal portrays two young brothers who are moving up the ranks of India’s hyper-competitive cricket world. The brothers’ opposing characters form the crux of the novel, and Garewal’s subtle characterizations of them are outshone only by his nuanced depiction of their controlling father. That said, as expert as Garewal is as a character actor, his neglect of Adiga’s powerful descriptive passages is notable. While the intense narratives on the cricket pitch are deftly delivered, the more contemplative moments—Adiga’s true strength as a writer—fall short and are often monotonous. One has the sense that the talented Garewal has more to give to this stunning novel. Z.S. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-10-19
A satirical novel set in the author's native Mumbai, where Indian boys from the slums find themselves hot commodities because of their potential in cricket.Even readers who know nothing about the sport will find this as easy to understand as if it were a novel about American inner-city kids groomed for success in basketball, facing long odds as an escape from poverty. In the third novel by Adiga, who won the Man Booker Prize for his debut (The White Tiger, 2008), the protagonist is Manju, 7 years old at the outset, overshadowed by the cricket prowess of his older brother. An influential gatekeeper and columnist named Tommy Sir sees potential in both boys, bringing them to the attention of a venture capitalist. The boys' father also sees the commercial potential in his sons and wants to maximize his percentage, holding them to rules he enforces strictly, even when they don't make much sense. The older son, Radha, is the first to rebel, "now conscious that his father's rules, which had framed the world around him since he could remember, were prison bars." Manju thus becomes the hope for the family and perhaps Mumbai, where young cricketers show the possibility of "creating new value in a dead city." But the younger brother faces plenty of coming-of-age challenges of his own, as cricket must compete with a potential girlfriend, with his interest in forensic science as nurtured by CSI, and, most of all, by a boy from a patrician background who also forsakes cricket but has options that the much poorer Manju does not. "He's my real father," says Manju of the richer friend he tries to emulate, before sexual identity as well as class distinction complicate the picture. As Manju tries to figure out who he really is and what he wants, the author suggests that "this Republic (so-called) of India, was filled to the brim with the repressed, depressed, and dangerous." Incisive and often wickedly funny as social commentary, though many characters are more like caricatures and the finale doesn't resolve much.