Over the course of seven nights Balram Halwi dictates an e-mail to a visiting foreign dignitary about his own rise from a rickshaw driver to an entrepreneur.
After reading Between the Assassinations (which I enjoyed) I went back to the library and found Adiga’s debut novel as well, which had received much praise. However, I’m glad I came across Between the Assassinations first because I never would have read it if I had started with The White Tiger.
I found the character of Balram completely unlikeable but, more than that, I found him uninteresting as well. I found myself questioning the device of dictating the message, as it just made me think of the poor man who would receive it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how he would just turn it off and not even bother to listen to the ramblings. Perhaps that’s symbolic of how the wider world ignores or is apathetic to the problems that plague the streets of India, but I just found the whole story to be an exercise in monotony. At no point did I care about what happened to the protagonist, and in a book like this you really need to be invested in the protagonist’s life.
As with Between the Assassinations there’s no real plot here, it’s a series of examples of life in India and the differences between the classes and the castes. There are a few moments of suspense, like when Balram discovered a secret about his fellow driver, and Adiga drops in the mention of a murder early on as well. However, this latter example just struck me as a cheap device to hook people in, and keep them reading through a largely forgettable story.
Now, it’s obvious with these two books that Adiga has much to say about India and the structure and attitudes of its society, and while it’s somewhat interesting to see the ground-level view of the country it doesn’t make for an interesting story, at least not in The White Tiger. With Between the Assassinations the vignettes worked well to give snapshots of the city, but with this one I didn’t feel entertained, and it’s fine it Adiga wants to offer a critique of India, but I want a good story to go along with it.
