Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard - Kiran Desai

hullabaloo in the guava orchard
kiran desai
c. 1998
224 pages

*contains possible spoilers*


This book was my Indian choice for the Expanding Horizons Challenge (see sidebar). Ok, I really wanted to like this book. Mostly because I loved the title. It was quirky! People don't use the word "hullabaloo" enough. Unfortunately, that was basically all I liked about this book.

I'm not even kidding, this book is not even 250 pages and it took me a week and a half of reading basically an hour and a half a day. I just didn't like any of the characters. None of them were sympathetic. Everyone was lazy and self centered. I was just so irritated with everyone!

Also, I thought the writing style was very childish. I felt that this voice and style of writing would not even be found in a YA novel, but in something written for advanced elementary school children. I consider myself to be an intelligent person and so I would expect what I read to think of me as such.

2/5

2 comments:

Scribacchina said...

Too bad that they spoiled such a good title on such a bad book. It happens all too often, maybe because they know that's the only way to sell it... Thanks for the warning.

Melissa said...

I agree. Too bad they spoiled it. Was it originally written in English, or can we blame the voice on the translator??