{"id":6420,"date":"2017-03-01T06:21:13","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T11:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6420"},"modified":"2017-03-01T06:21:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T11:21:13","slug":"selection-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6420","title":{"rendered":"***Selection Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mumbai,

photo: David Brossard, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Aravind Adiga, narrated by Sartaj Garewal \u2013 Adiga\u2019s 2017 novel purports to be about two brothers, growing up in a Mumbai slum, under the obsessive protection of their cricket-crazy father\u2014a helicopter parent with a swinging cricket bat for a rotor blade. Adiga\u2019s debut novel The White Tiger<\/em> was such a witty, penetrating exploration of economics and capitalism and how they affect the average person (and a winner of the Man Booker Prize) that I eagerly awaited this one. If he can make economics entertaining, cricket should be a snap, right?<\/p>\n

To read the book, it thankfully isn\u2019t necessary to understand cricket\u2019s impenetrable mysteries. The novel is in essence a coming-of-age story, a story of when to hold on to parental values and when to abandon them, of the choices that come the boys\u2019 way and what they do with them, and the intrusions of fate.<\/p>\n

There are some wonderful characters: the boys Radha Kumar and his principal rival in cricket and in life, his younger brother Manju, their clueless dad\u2014the lowly chutney salesman Mohan\u2014and the local cricket talent scout Tommy Sir, among many others. Years of effort are guiding the boys\u2019 efforts to \u201cselection day,\u201d when just a couple of up-and-coming 17-year-olds will be chosen to play for Bombay Cricket. That one day will make the boys\u2019 future or break their father\u2019s heart. Possibly both.<\/p>\n

One of the best aspects of the book is the relationship between the boys. Said Carmela Ciuraru<\/a> in the San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, \u201cAdiga superbly captures the intimacy between the two brothers, as they bicker, tease and protect each other\u201d and as Manju struggles with his sexuality. Also entertaining were the cricket officials\u2019 efforts to keep the father away from the playing fields. Anyone who\u2019s been especially close to a brother or who\u2019s observed the obsessive parents at their children\u2019s sporting events can identify with the dilemmas of this striving family. Again, says Ciuraru, Adiga\u2019s take is \u201cboth satirical and affectionate as he shows how the sport is less a means of lifting gifted kids out of poverty than reinforcing boundaries of privilege in rather ruthless ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book begins three years before the Selection Day in which Radha will participate and a short concluding section takes place eleven years later. As a tremendous fan of audio books, I was quite disappointed in the narration by Sartaj Garewal and believe it is at least partly responsible for my not becoming fully engaged with this book. Read a print version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Aravind Adiga, narrated by Sartaj Garewal \u2013 Adiga\u2019s 2017 novel purports to be about two brothers, growing up in a Mumbai slum, under the obsessive protection of their cricket-crazy father\u2014a helicopter parent with a swinging cricket bat for a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"***Selection Day - Mumbai boys growing up with one obsession: cricket. How a father's passion shapes their world.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[77,311,126,60],"tags":[864,865,601],"class_list":["post-6420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-novel","category-reading-2","category-storytelling","tag-coming-of-age","tag-mumbai","tag-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Fy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6422,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6420\/revisions\/6422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}