2008-02-23 A brave but uneven attempt

This is a brave book with good intent but very unevenly written.

The premise - about a mathematics prodigy, and her relationship with her family - is interesting. Yes, I want to know what goes on in such families and what the dynamics are. What makes it more interesting is that the family in question is an Indian family trying to find its way in Britain so they are different in more ways than one and the `immigrant theme' gives added texture (although the family's trip to India half way through the book seems like a tangent).

The best part of the book is the final chapters, with the girl prodigy Rumi cracking up and running away, and the complete incomprehension of her family. It works well. But the rest is very patchy. We do not really get how controlling the father is. The character of the mother is only sketchily drawn. So much more could have been done with the characters of the parents who are key in this tale.

There is unevenness in Rumi's own psychological portrayal, and often I do not find her convincing. Sometimes she seems older, sometimes younger.

Although the book is easy to read and moves on at a good pace, the dialogue is often clunky, the prose can be stilted. And the narrative tense inexplicably moves from past to present tense which does not help. I was particularly irritated by the forced metaphors and stilted similes. Like: "his heart, which was softening like a marshmallow on a fire..." The time Rumi spends on computer games was described as "time that had a special currency of its own, like chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil". Dreadful.

The story of the girl maths prodigy that made to Oxford and then ran away was a big story in the newspapers some years back, and yes, the parents were portrayed as pushy and controlling so I kind of knew what was going to happen. I was interested in Nikita Lalwani's interpretation, but somehow she did not really enlighten me as I had been hoping.

It's really odd that this book made the Booker longlist. Nikita Lalwani may go on to write better books, but this one is definitely not `Booker' class.