London Book Club: April

April saw the SYP book club reading the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner, The White Tiger. A lot of people described the storyline as being ‘familiar’ – we thought it was quite similar to the box-office hit Slumdog Millionaire. Also, as some of us had been to the Pre-LBF seminar on Indian Publishing, issues like the horrendous traffic problems in India were fresh in our minds. This led to a discussion of the fact that India seems to be a very topical issue. Obviously, it is the market focus at this year’s London Book Fair, but even within the UK film industry, the focus is currently on India.

As to whether or not we liked the book – some people liked it and others didn’t. One regular book club member absolutely loved it! Those of us who were not so keen still thought it was a good ‘book club book’; it generated a lot of discussion, even though some didn’t necessarily like the storyline. I think there’s a lot to be said about the fact that we talked about the book for almost an hour! In fact, the discussion made someone want to go back and read it again.

I commented that I didn’t like the storyline being narrated as a letter. We actually weren’t sure whether it was meant to be a letter or an email, but generally there were mixed views as to whether or not this type of narration was used effectively in the book. We also discussed how when the main character, Balram Halwai, left his hometown, his family treated him like an outcast. We felt that this paralleled with his master Ashok’s position in his family, because he married Pinky Madam who was not only from America, but was also a Christian and not a Hindu.

A few people wanted to know whether or not we sympathised with Balram and whether he came across as a victim. I think as a group we definitely sympathised with Balram. One person admitted to have been egging Balram on to murder his master, although this was more due to annoyance that Balram hadn’t been sticking up for himself. We also discussed the murder that took place at the end of the story. I personally felt that the first description of Balram murdering his master (right at the beginning of the book) was too casually brought into the narrative, and it felt like a complete character change. Up until then, Balram had been so nice and innocent! Someone commented that it was when Balram noticed that his girl’s hair was dyed blonde (whereas his master Ashok’s girl really did have blonde hair) Balram realised that he could never be his master and thus had to kill him.

There is an incident in the story where one of Balram’s other masters makes Balram look for a one rupee coin that he has lost. After failing to find the coin, Balram gets out one of his own rupee coins and gives it to his master pretending that it is the lost coin. We felt that this act highlighted how much Balram was the ‘bigger’ man in comparison to the master, who appears to be overjoyed when the lost one rupee coin is found.

We briefly discussed the British Indian Community’s negative reaction to the book when it was first published, especially how they didn’t like Aravind Adiga’s focus on the slums. This led to a discussion on the concept of wanting to ‘hide’ the negative parts of your own country. We all felt that this is a natural reaction as there are slums in England. In fact one person remarked that whilst they did like the book because of the ‘escapism’ factor, they might not have liked it if it had been a book containing descriptions of the slums of England. This reminded us of a similar outburst when Brick Lane was published.

We thought it was quite ironic that at the beginning of the story the school inspector tells Balram that he is a ‘White Tiger’: a rare finding amongst his classmates. This makes the reader think that he’s going to be a model pupil and finish school. However, pretty soon after the inspector’s visit, he ends up leaving school and becomes a tea-boy. In Slumdog Millionaire, although the main character in the film is a tea-boy, there’s no accompanying explanation as to why he is a tea-boy. So we liked the fact that in The White Tiger there is a very long explanation as to why, and we find out that he comes from a long line of tea-boys and sweet-makers.

Naturally, as this book won the Man Booker Prize in 2008, there was a discussion around whether or not it was a worthy winner. We remembered how a similar discussion had arisen when we had been reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which won The Man Booker Prize in 2006. A lot of us felt that because we knew it had won the Man Booker Prize, our expectations were high before we’d even begun to read the book. In conclusion, the general feeling was that everyone had enjoyed the book and found it entertaining, but didn’t necessarily feel that it had the gravitas associated with Man Booker winners.

Serena Alam