Vikas Swarup is the author of “Q & A” which was made into the film “Slumdog Millionaire”. Here I imagine he started with the idea of “The Accidental Apprentice,” using it to tell the story of Sapna Sinha, who works in an electronics shop in Delhi.
I’m liking
The book got straight into the action – the very first page has Sapna in prison, trying to avoid the death penalty! I liked the way this put a frame around the whole story. Without having the prison situation in the back of my mind throughout the book, I would have thought that I knew where the story was going. Instead, I was kept guessing, trying to figure out how she got there.
I enjoyed the Delhi setting, and I found the story fast-paced and exciting, and easy to read. There were also plenty of plot twists and some more serious stuff, as the story covered some current issues in India (similar to “Slumdog Millionaire”).
Things that made me go hmmmm
I found writing style a bit over the top and it involved a lot of clichés, which I found annoying. For example, when Sapna’s sister makes a hurtful remark, Sapna is not just hurt, she is stung by the comment’s brutal honesty, and left speechless. On another occasion she says, “There was a time, not so long ago, when the ship of my life had direction and momentum. Now it seems like an aimless, rudderless drift, where one week leads to another, each day is the same and nothing ever changes.” Instead of making me sympathise with Sapna, that just made me groan!
Some of the dialogue was also quite cheesy, which was distracting, and the characters often swung very quickly from one emotion to another – one moment Sapna was calm and in charge of a situation, then all of a sudden she would be panicky and afraid, and then she would be in control again.
I thought that the story did get a bit silly at times, and I think that if Sapna had been given less challenges, it would have been more believable.
The conclusion
I enjoyed this book. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed “Slumdog Millionaire” as it uses a similar storytelling device, and also to anyone who likes a good adventure story, or who is interested in reading about India. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who likes true-to-life stories or who might be annoyed by the clichés.
