Vikas Swarup: Six Suspects

Given The White Tiger is one of few books that I gave 5 hearts to I eagerly reached for another book written by and Indian author. And it’s not any author, it’s the author of Q&A, the book which became the script base for the world’s famous Slumdog Millionaire movie. I didn’t read Q&A, I loved the movie though. The story was cleverly constructed, had a new and original idea behind it. Plus it was set in Indian reality which fascinates me a lot.

Six Suspects is Swarup’s second book and its story is equally surprising, fresh and original. It starts of with a murder of a film producer, a son of a minister who manages to get away with anything and everything that’s against the law. The story then goes back in time and looks at lives of six people who become suspects for this murder.

One is a tribal from Andaman Islands somewhere in the Bay of Bengal. One is a mobile phone thief who dreams of living a life of the rich. There is also a famous Bollywood actress, a state minister and father of the murdered Vicky Ray, a retired politician and womanizer and lastly, an American Wal-Mart forklift operator who travels to India to get married to his pen pal.

We follow the days in their lives leading up all of them being at Vicky Rai’s party where the crime was committed. It’s an interesting mixture of different parts of Indian life we get introduced to, from the poorest to the richest and most influential in the country. We get to see how money can buy everything and everyone. And when by the end, when you’re starting to think that justice will finally win we witness the process of finding the murderer and we wonder whether there is any hope left.

It’s a really enjoyable book, unique and refreshing. Sometimes slightly difficult to follow with the number of Indian names (especially the part about Vicky’s father) but nonetheless interesting and gripping. The ending is slightly surprising, feels a bit as if the author wanted to play a cheeky joke with the reader but it was a funny joke, definitely made me smile. I think it could follow the paths of Slumdog… if anyone made it into a movie.

My rating: YYYYY

Michael Cunningham: The Hours

I haven’t read anything by Virginia Woolf nor know much about her apart from what I saw in the movie version of this story. And even that was quite a long time ago.

This book is a uniquely written story, almost difficult to believe it was written by a man. It’s a story of three women each living in a different city and at different times – London of the 1920s, Los Angeles of the 40s and New York at the end of twentieth century. Even though they live in such different times they share similar dilemmas about lives they are living – kind of “is this really it?” feeling.

“There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined ... Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.“

We meet Virginia Woolf as she’s living in Richmond writing her book and trying to recover her health. Clarissa is the new Mrs Dalloway from Woolf’s book, only living in New York and in new times, watching her friend slowly die of AIDS. And Laura Brown is a pregnant mother of one who’s trying hard to be a good housewife. Though that isn’t exactly who she feels she’d like to be.

I’ve read a few reviews around before reading the book and seen comments that crying over a cake which is not perfect or throwing a party to a dying friend is just pathetic but how true it is! I think it is a perfect picture of how weird and messed up woman’s nature can be sometimes. And that’s one of the reasons I find it hard to believe that it was written by a man.

Full of interesting characters, especially in the New York episodes, The Hours it interesting to read, it does makes you think about things you appreciate in your life. I truly enjoyed reading this book although I don’t think I would like to read it if I was feeling a bit down as I don’t think it would pick up the mood in any way!

My rating: YYYYY