13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting insight into the tormented psyche of either Indian youth or the author - not sure which..., January 29, 2008
This review is from: One Night at the Call Center: A Novel (Paperback)
This quick, engaging story about the problems in the lives of six call center workers in India, portrays the plight of young Indians who in their desire to move up the socioeconomic ladder, ironically find themselves exploited by a distant and uncaring American corporation and restricted by outdated cultural traditions.
I enjoyed the story and the writing style, although I thought the "phone call from God" plot twist toward the end was rendered with all the subtlety of a self-help book (I'm surprised God didn't number the "valuable life lessons" for our convenience).
Forgiving that, my main gripe with this book is that neither the characters nor the author seemed to quite grasp the aforementioned "valuable life lessons".
The reason I say this is that in the story, Americans are portrayed individually (as callers into the call center) as fearful, lazy, stupid, warmongers who unfairly enjoy a better lifestyle than Indians - and collectively (in the form of corporations) as the personification of evil, unfairness and oppression. And so, the characters' economic problems are blamed on the selfish, stupid Americans who oppress them. Fair enough - every story needs a bad guy.
But yet, even after God shows up on the scene and dispenses the aforementioned "valuable life lessons" (take responsibility for your own lives, stop blaming others, stop making excuses) Americans (and the boss, as a stand-in for the Americans) are still the scapegoat, and the characters use their newfound self-confidence and perspective on life to exact REVENGE!!!
Now, to me, vindictiveness (even coupled with the loftier goal of saving the call center) seems incongruent with psychological well being and a tip-off that maybe someone doesn't fully understand those "valuable life lessons". And so I actually considered at length that perhaps the author's true intention was to convey the self-defeating nature of blaming, complaining and not taking responsibility, by showing the characters' hypocrisy - how they suffered from an inferiority complex and psychologically projected their self-loathing onto America, their perceived oppressor. (After all, the very name of the protagonist with the most wounded inner child - "Vroom" - could be a symbolic reference to his materialistic nature and the conflicted way in which he simultaneously condemns and worships western culture).
But ... strangely enough I was left with the bizarre impression that the author himself was blind to the disconnect between the lessons the book extolls and its underlying whinyness and racism, which raises the disturbing question of whether the attitudes in the book were meant as those of the characters or of Indian youth - or worse, whether they are in fact the attitudes of the writer himself (I hope not).
So overall, I enjoyed the book for it's portrayal of the youth culture in India, but even more for the bizarre, psychological conflicts which it represents and which I'm still puzzling over.
... and as a final note, one last thing that I found disconcerting was that the setup for the story (While travelling I met someone who told me this story and it was so compelling that I had to meet the characters and turn it into my next novel)is an obvious copy of the setup in "Life of Pi" - which I imagine the author must have read, since it was a huge bestseller having to do with India.
and finally...
DISCLAIMER: If in fact the author's intention was to point out the hypocrisy of claiming to take responsibility for one's life while simultaneously plotting revenge against one's imagined oppressors, then TOUCHE'! - because with this book, he is then not blind to his own predjudices or merely pandering to the attitudes of the disaffected Indian youth market, but rather is holding a mirror to their face and challenging them to recognize how their own attitudes and predjudices may play a part in holding them back while and letting them know that by healing their own collective psyche they will be able to rise above whatever systemic conditions conspire to oppress them.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Just isn't very good, April 26, 2008
This review is from: One Night at the Call Center: A Novel (Paperback)
This novel is nothing special, has a mediocre storyline, a couple of interesting characters and was a quick, light diversion.
I have several problems with it, though. First, it's pretty juvenile. The author fulfills his personal fantasies by having the main character get revenge on his boss and get the girl in the end. Second, the dialogue is unrealistic and the phone call from God is completely out of place. It's 5 seconds of fantasy in a novel that's supposed to be a slice of reality. Third, is that this novel is unapologetically racist. The author spends quite a few lines in several places in the book declaring Americans to be fat, stupid, lazy, paranoid war-mongers. Not nice. Fourth, the book cover claims that the book is funny. Nope. Not even a little.
All in all, I wouldn't recommend this book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Good, April 11, 2009
This review is from: One Night at the Call Center: A Novel (Paperback)
I am not sure why this book receieved some of the crticism it has, to me it was a work of fiction and the statements, to the extent they are racist on their face, were not intended to be racist as oppossed to working in the context of the story (at least the way I read the book.)
The book starts off with the author on a train when he meets a woman who has a story to tell, with the caveat that if she tells the storry the author must write it. During this time he makes it clear in many ways that he is parodying himself at the same time to the extent that she was not in awe off his prior success of his first book and how he sets that up. To me that set the tone for what followed.
We then get into each of the charactors and personalities. What they want to eat or wear, or whether it is worthile to carpool on a given day. Some of it is mundane, and perhaps the charactors are not fully developed, but each of them have their place in their personalities.
As to the issue regarding how Americans appear, it is not that far from what people should expect. Not saying that all Americans are warmongering lazy people, but once again in context - this is a call center to answer questions and address problems. Needless to say people calling in will often be rude or short because they are having issues and problems. They are frustrated.
And people on the receiving end will then develop impressions based on that. It seemed to convey to me in fact the charactors were limited by theeir preconceptions and devloping predjudice. How they react to the message given to them by God also is telling in the context of everything else that had gone on up to the point.
The book is a quick and easy read and good general fiction with some good funny lines. I guess it depends on how you approach the book. I do not think the author was trying to write something as a political statement, instead he was juxtaposing things in the context of fiction and often the actions taken by the charactors to not mesh up with their words. Which seemed to be the point of it all.
Of course if the author is in fact anti-American and was just trying to make an anti-American humor writing, then in that case I am giving him too much credit.
4-5 stars, and I think 5 is worthwhile based on what I thought the book was trying to accomplish.
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