Five Point Someone: What Not to Do in IIT (Paperback)

~ Chetan Bhagat (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Novel that traces the efforts of Indian youth to educate themselves, work out relationships in a market place dominated by IT industry. Funny and clever.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Rupa & Co. (July 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8129104601
• ISBN-13: 978-8129104601
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #776,605 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Needs zero stars, December 3, 2005

A Kid's Review

I picked up this book on my summer trip to India after reading all the hoopla it created there. Boy, was I disappointed! The story has so much potential and is clearly worth telling, but the execution...is miserable! Its success in India is just a celebration of mediocrity. The writing is so bad that it actually irritates. There are virtually NO descriptions to stimulate imagination and the book CRIES out for an editor! Take this literary gem "now i am no Einstein, or something"...and you wonder how such utter butchery of the English language made it past an editor's pen. I understand that it is supposed to reflect the colloquialisms of "Hinglish" and to tolerate that for dialogues is fine... but when used in descriptions by the author, it stinks of banality. There is no character development, no one to empathize with, and stereotypes rule. I read somewhere that he spent 3 or 4 days trying to write the lovemaking scene between Neha and Hari... and when i read the single sentence Mr Bhagat uses to describe it, i was convinced that he must have taken 12 years to write the book if a single sentence of such mediocrity took 3 days to write.
That he is an IITan, doesn't speak well for the IITs. In fact, judging by his language, his Five point grade in IIT is probably a stellar performance. On the other hand, the IITs don't teach creative writing!

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars D Minus, September 15, 2005

By	PRADIPTA PRASUN SAHA (Singapore) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The idea is neat and long overdue, but the execution is terrible...this book reads like an elementary school kid's attempt at a short story. The style is primitive, the situations seem forced (like a formula - a book about growing up must have ingredients A,B,C,...), and I am not even commenting about certain axioms the author assumes regarding the equations between GPAs and relationships. There could not be a bigger disadvertisement for Indian writing in English.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Simplistic portrayal, April 26, 2006

By	Tap-Tap "Tap" (London) - See all my reviews

This is the kind of book that you read and forget about quickly. I cannot tell how accurately it portrays life in IITs, but it sounds convincing enough. It has an interesting story, but the writing is too simplistic, even amateurish. Often it reads like like it was written by a college student for a few of his friends to share a chuckle with. The characters aren't fully fleshed out, and it misses numerous opportunities to make good book out of it. As we say in India, it is nothing more than a 'timepass'.