Selection Day by Aravind Adiga.

From the slums of Mumbai, a father strongly encourages his two sons to excel at cricket and become selected for the team.

Aravind puts the reader in the picture about modern day life in India and you get the feel of Mumbai with the contrasts between the slums and the flash wealthy parts. I enjoyed the local colour and the reflections of the father who had moved from a rural Indian village to the vibrant city of Mumbai.

But this story is a drag and very ordinary. It has your usual hopes of the father, sibling rivalry between two brothers, the challenges of teenage years, growing up, finding your way into adulthood and your sexuality. Yes folks, I found Selection Day to be regular soap opera fodder. Think EastEnders moves to Mumbai to see the relatives on an extended holiday. Don’t be put off by the boring sport of cricket as this is as relevant as one character having a stall on Walford Market.

Aravind won the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for his novel The White Tiger which I thought was an okay 3 star read. But I found Selection Day to be a POOR read and a big disappointment. I did not get pleasure from reading this novel. I did not find it entertaining. Okay it did not bore the pants off me about cricket as this was only a tiny bit of this sorry novel. I did not develop an empathy for the father or his two sons. There wasn’t even some spicy sex to liven things up. Even the handling of the differences between the Hindu and Muslim faiths was tame. So sorry Aravind, Selection Day only gets 2 stars from me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Scribner for giving me a copy of this book on the understanding that I provide an honest review.

Selection Day is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2016.