Transmission

Book Details

Library

Author

Hari Kunzru

Category

Fiction

Editor

Reference #

Contributor

Location

Translator

Status

Publisher

Penguin Books Ltd

Owner

Country

Great Britain

Personal

Language

Read it

Yes

Year Published

2004

Date Read

06/02/2006

ISBN

0241142687

Personal Rating

 4/10

LCCN

Purchase

Edition

Purchase Date

Printing

Acquired from 

Marlborough Library

Binding

Bookclub Edition

Price

$0.00

Pages

281

Value

$0.00

Overview

Leela Zahir, Bollywood actress and tempramental star, is being catapulted from the fringes of fame into a million inboxes. Arjun Mehta, computer geek, looks up from his screen to find that he does, after all, have a role to play in the world. Guy Swift, marketing executive with his own agency, a beautiful girlfriend and a handle on modern life, is losing his grip.

The message that has landed in a million inboxes has the power to destroy dreams and to make them, hijack lives and to set them free. In this age of instant worldwide communications, anything can happen and anything will...

Comment

Parts of this book read like a 60 minutes transcript, parts of it like a trashy romance. Arjun, the wannabe-hero, spends half his life daydreaming about the Indian movies he lives by, and the other half playing with computer parts begged and borrowed. He is not a particularly strong character - his weakness is a big part of the way the story goes, but it's also a big problem to get around. I just couldn't like him.

Guy is the exact opposite, he oozes confidence and drips charm, and I couldn't bring myself to sympathise with him either. He was an asshole, and even though he knew it, the only thing he tried to change was the mincing way that he walked.

Leela and Gabrielle, the two women, were far more believable and likable, most likely because they were both so miserable - they were real people.

I think this was an okay book at best. The ending was no real ending at all, and left the reader to make up whatever they pleased, which fitted with the rest of the story - you can either make it the trashy romance it started as, or the conspiracy theory/mystery that were suggested at the end. Either way, this left me with a sense of distaste - the only character I really believed ended up dead, and there were no resolutions with any of the others.