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November 03, 2005
Book: One Night @ The Call Center
This is Chetan Bhagat's second novel after Five Point Someone. A friend of mine had recommended that I read Five Point Someone, so when I found the second novel, I thought this might not be a bad read. Well, I was wrong...
Rating: 2.0 / 5.0
Author: Chetan Bhagat
I noticed this book at the local bookstore a few days back and I read through the first two chapters. It was definitely interesting and the whole premise of God calling up a call center sounded like a good setting for a very funny novel. The humor is very tongue in cheek college flavored sarcasm, which I don't have anything against.
When I finished reading the book, I was completely disappointed, a hundred times amplified by the very last page of the story. Even the humor was getting tiring half way through the book. So where did it all go wrong? Firstly, I could sense the author had started off with a list of personalities that he wanted to 'fit' into this story. Let me just say that all the personalities are extremely flat with predictable flaws. The plot moves without any twists as the author reveals the lives of the characters through conversations and flash backs. Finally, when you expect something witty to happen when 'God' turns up at the very end of the book, the book fizzles and employs some corny techniques to impart some 'moral preaching'. The conclusion is a typical Hindi masala film style ending.
The biggest problem with the book is that it doesn't try to be original or get the reader to feel for the characters. Maybe it is because of the short length of the book or the rather informal style of writing, I don't know. The author could have avoided using many of the cliches of middle class youth segment problems and tried to be inventive. The book tried extremely hard to 'teach' you a good moral lesson, but it sounded more like the hollow speeches that a contestant at a beauty paegent comes up with.
What really disgusted me was the final page of the book which ensured that I was going to put this book in the annals of worst ever books written. What the grok was the author thinking?
I cannot really recommend this book and I think the if you are still desperate to read, go half way through the book and stop as soon as you find the humor tiring and move on to reading something else.
Rating: 2.0 / 5.0
Posted by amitc at November 3, 2005 03:37 PM
Comments
I was really contemplating about reaading this book until i read this entry :) Thanks :p
Posted by: Jai Vasanth at January 9, 2006 08:07 PM