Reviews

Well written and very well paced covering a lifespan in a trim 220 or so pages. There's no fat in this book. At the same time I didn't feel like there was a lot of heft. I've seen these themes and tropes given more thoughtful consideration in other books and pieces of art. I don't think this book will linger that long in my mind, though it was a good quick read otherwise.

daaani's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

lanidelrey's review against another edition

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3.0

The first fictional novel I’ve read written in the 2nd person so that the reader is the protagonist, which I thought was intriguing. I appreciate the structure of the novel to contextualize and comment on the rags to riches story in an industrializing Asian country (the author doesn’t specify where it’s set); specifically, that the pursuit of wealth within a capitalist economy can begin as a means to survive but towards an end devoid of what actually makes life meaningful. Three stars because it was good, but not my favorite story

coronaurora's review against another edition

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4.0

This brought a smile to my face. A novella that is actually a fictional autobiography of an eponymous small-town peasant who builds himself a mini bottled water empire in an eponymous South Asian country, I found it tender, concerned and reliably informed about the milieu it talked from. There is a touching thread of an unconsummated love affair that almost survives the torrents of lives lived by the protagonist and his first love as they both exclusively chase their individual American dream in a big megapolis checking each of its trappings: the obligatory marriage and kid, the expanding business, the enveloping heart disease, the scams, the violence from those begrudging their money, and this somewhat-cinematic, almost-unbelievable rope of co-incidence imparts this otherwise distant book a welcome tenderness.

At barely 200 pages, the second person telling shoulders the leaps in year well and manages to keep you invested. In retrospect the casual telling of whole years in a few lines of prose befits a life lived chasing the materialistic objects and dubious social ephemeralities like "status" and "connections" which are the life-blood of social fabric in such countries.

Sharing its tone, themes and sentiments with the more voluminous Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire published coincidentally in the same year, Hamid with his smaller canvas peopled with fewer characters achieves a similar concoction of sociological snapshot, decade-long sweep with principal characters in convincing mortal peril and sporting an identifiable contemplative mood cherry-topped with wry sense of humour. It shares with Aw's book much of its cleverness too, not least the ungainly title, the ironic Self Help Money Making chapter titles (Aw wrote for us whole self-help chapters), and like Aw's book, here too, it's the masterful offsetting of the self-reflexiveness and other literary tropes with genuine concern for the world state and some head-bending, heart-rending turns of phrase that make this a triumph.

sortasamm's review

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

camillew's review against another edition

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fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

Unclear what the main message or question was (not that there needs to be one it just made the reading experience weird.)
So far my least favorite of Hamids books (Exit west is first then the reluctant fundamentalist.) The book kinda just fell flat

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