The Accidental Apprentice – Vikas Swarup

It all starts when salesgirl Sapna Sinha is approached out of the blue by billionaire industrialist V M Acharya with a bizarre proposal that she allows herself to be assessed as his potential successor as CEO of the massive ABC Group.

He explains he distrusts conventional recruitment methods and will judge her fitness for the role through seven unspecified tests. It sounds bonkers to her, but there is a

hefty up-front payment on offer just for agreeing to take part. And recent events put her in desperate need of funds (she is the family’s sole breadwinner) so why not humour the old man?

Sapna’s life moves from the ordinary to the extraordinary as she finds her everyday life suddenly presenting her with a succession of situations that require: leadership, integrity, courage, foresight, resourcefulness and decisiveness. It seems impossible that all these have been set up by Acharya, but how else to explain the chain of events?

Sapna’s testing adventures take place against a backcloth of modern India with all its contradictions. And as the seventh test arrives, her suspicions that not all is as it seems strengthen in a hectic and dramatic climax.

The author’s Q & A (retitled Slumdog Millionaire after the film was made) is a hard act to follow and for me this fell short of the mark. Where in Q & A the coincidences were unlikely but believable, here it all seems too contrived to really buy into.

Nevertheless it rattles along well and takes pot shots at some unsavoury aspects of India – corruption in public office, exploitation of child labour, the cult of celebrity, forced marriage, and political patronage all come in for a bashing.

And the finale, unexpected twists and all, is quite exciting so still well worth a read.

The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

This is the 2006 thirtieth anniversary edition of the 1976 book that broke new ground both in genetics and in popularising science.
Dawkins argues that the key unit in determining successful survival and reproduction, and so behaviour, is not the individual but the each gene carried in the cells of the organism – what he calls the replicators.

It’s complicated, even though Dawkins simplifies and exemplifies, which makes it a challenging read. His breezy style lightens the load but I found I needed to read it in small stints, inevitably over an extended period, to retain enthusiasm.

I have read more readable popular science, Isaac Asimov and Bill Bryson come to mind, but their purpose was to inform and explain whereas here Dawkins is seeking to persuade. Hence he is a little hectoring and comes across as a bit of a show-off.

Still the main thrust of the argument is hammered home and is plausible enough; but in the absence of detailed knowledge of the field, or any alternative hypothesis considered, the reader has to take it or leave it.

It is worth reading to see what the fuss is (or was) about, and to tick off a book that finds its way on to many a reading list, but neither a page-turner nor a life-changer for me.

One for the Money – Janet Evanovitch

Stephanie Plum is a New Jersey girl (woman really) who is out of work, out of luck, and running out of furniture to sell to pay the rent, buy food and keep up payments on the car.

Desperation drives her to her cousin Vinnie’s office initially for a filing job, but instead she seizes the opportunity of a week’s trial as a ‘recovery agent’, chasing down and bringing in those who have skipped bail. She’s seduced by the 10% commission; however what seems like easy money turns out to be anything but.

There’s big money on the head of Joseph Morelli. He’s a cop wanted for murder, with whom she has had a couple of brief, well-spaced but memorable encounters. Her pursuit of him provides a steep learning curve as a bounty hunter and leads her into situations embarrassing, painful, terrifying and eventually deadly.

As befits her New Jersey persona, Stephanie narrates it all with great self-deprecating wit and humour that moves the story along at a fast pace. It either got better or I took time to get into it, but either way by the end I was, by turns, laughing, wincing or worrying for her.

Evanovitch is now up to number 21 in the Stephanie Plum series so it must be a winning formula, but this is the first one, that set it all off, and understandably so.

Renegade – Robyn Young

Read as part Y of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey.

Chosen because

None of the few books in the Y section leapt out at me, but they did include a few from Robyn Young’s two historical trilogies, “Brethren” and “Insurrection”. Although not my usual fare, the spirit of the A to Z journey demands trying new authors and unfamiliar genres, so I selected the second book of the second trilogy (which also happened to be the least voluminous at a mere 400+ pages).

The Review

The Insurrection trilogy centres on Robert the Bruce, contender for the Scottish throne, which (depending on your view of 1300 AD politics) is vacant and/or subservient to that of England. King Edward (not called the Hammer of the Scots for nothing) has a mission in life, just about accomplished, to unite the four ‘home’ countries under his single rule.

In Renegade, Robert Bruce is playing a dangerous game. He yearns for a free Scotland, preferably under him as king, but to get there he has to play the long game, biding his time and bowing the knee to Edward while the various factions north of the border resolve themselves.

The nominal king, John Balliol is in France seeking backing for his reassertion of independence; the Earl of Buchan a.k.a. ‘The Black Comyn’ harbours hopes of his own, and is a sworn blood enemy of the Bruces; and William Wallace, Braveheart himself, is still on the loose creating mayhem with his battle-axe.

Dissimulation, treachery, armed combat, life in court, and personal anguish, mix to form a frantic picture of Robert’s world, against which he pursues his ambition.

It is an enjoyable enough read that is more of an adventure story than a history lesson. But as ever with historical fiction I find it hard to disassociate the fiction from the history, continually wondering which incidents (and characters) are fact and which made up (or interpolated); particularly, as in this case, when my knowledge of the period is sketchy or flawed. Helpfully, in an afterword, the author makes it all clear.

Read another?

Inevitably as part of a trilogy the reader is left hanging, so the temptation is there to find out what happens in the third volume "Kingdom".

Das Boot (The Boat) – Lothar Gunther Buchheim

Buchheim served in a German U-boat in the Second World War and while this book is fiction the events portrayed were all witnessed by him, one of the minority of U-boat crew who survived.

It’s a single voyage, related by a naval war correspondent on board as an officer, who gives a holistic, fly on the wall, view of the boat and the crew of fifty-one men. There is the frantic drinking and whoring prior to departure; the mind-numbing tedium of weeks spent ‘frigging around’ in search of convoys, mere specks in the enormity of the Atlantic Ocean; followed by the tense torpedo attacks and the nerve-shredding dodging of depth-charge retaliation.

The action, or inaction, is interspersed with thoughts of the lives left behind, and observations on the practicalities of crowded living in a storm-tossed tin can for months on end. There are interesting insights into the intricacies of keeping the craft afloat or submerged and, when submerged, level; a lasting image is the need when crash diving for all hands to rush to the front of the boat to help its downward trajectory.

It is a long read (500+ pages) and between the bursts of activity the pages turn slowly; when the action starts they fly. Thus is the submariners’ experience authentically shared with the reader, right up to the life and death dash for home at the end.