Great story, poor narrator

Fabulous story, really gripping, very engaging protagonist.
However the reader’s accent kept slipping - with bits of British accent coming in for a syllable here and a syllable there.
Distracting. I would recommend audible commissions another recording with a stronger narrator

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I found the story creepy and harrowing

I got the point but, for me, the way it was told was hard to listen too. The narrators voice was also a bit monosyllabic and I found myself tuning in and out.

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Okay

A little bit slow going but okay in the end. Narration would have been better with a male voice

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Book club choice

Excellent book well narrated storyline. Atmospheric Descriptions of scenes made you feel as though you were there yourself.

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A thought provoking audio book

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this audio book. It brought the sights, smells and poverty of India and it's cast system well into the mix of the story. Well read by the narrator, I can only recommend as I was captivated by the unusual story as it unwound.

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3 people found this helpful

Reality check

Wonderful introduction into an India one never hears of. The story is both compelling and appalling at the same time. The narrator could have been better chosen but this did not take away from the plot.

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2 people found this helpful

Brilliant...

A great book about modern India and social mobility which highlights the duplicity of government and society in the story of one man's mission to beat the system

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2 people found this helpful

Story was great audiobook not so much

The narrator completely failed while imitating an Indian accent, as an Indian myself, I can assure you one no Indian speaks the way the narrator read the dialogues.

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A fine Booker winner

Don't get me wrong, I loved "God of Small Things" and enjoyed "A Suitable Boy" and still think "Shame" is Rushdie's finest novel, but Adiga's "White Tiger" explores a very different India. No elaborate weddings, no saris and spices, no arranged marriages - this is the India of the economic miracle of the 'Electronic City' that is Bangalore, of self-appointed 'entrepreneurs' like Balram Halwai who have come from "the Darkness" of small villages and are eager for wealth and status.

Written in the form of a seven letters to Wen Jiabao, the visiting Chinese premier, offering him lessons in entrepreneurship and democracy, but Balram's rags-to-riches tales is in fact it is a lesson in poverty, humiliation and murder. Adiga's narrative voice is sharp and sardonic, his grasp of telling images and details haunting and his satire of the Indian middle classes lacerating. This is not a novel for those with romantic illusions about India - it is angry, didactic, funny, furious and viscerally compelling

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48 people found this helpful

Appalling narration

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The book probably deserves three for the story line. But the narration was so awful, I wouldn't recommend the audiobook. I think it was reasonable to have a female voice narrating for a boy. But the accent was overdone, often similar across characters and, conversation was often mixed up with prose.

The main character isn't plausible. The only way to make the story work is to make the assumption that much of what is going on in his head to explain his behaviour is untold. Moreover very little in the story told allows any inferences to be made. It's an account of events which seems to promise more, but doesn't deliver.

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10 people found this helpful