Author: Aravind Adiga.
The protagonist Yogesh A Murthy (known as ‘masterji’) is a retired teacher living in Vishram society of Mumbai. His son lives in another part of Mumbai with his family. Masterji lives alone. He is respected by all the residents of that society. Shah, a real estate guy, thinks that the location of the society is where the future is and wants to redevelop it. So to buy that society, he offers a tempting amount to the residents and keeps a deadline for them to vacate. After initial resistance by some residents gradually everyone in the society will incline to accept the offer because of their personal reasons except Masterji !!
Masterji don't want to leave the society at any cost as he has all his memories there. Shah, who once came to Mumbai penniless, worked hard to get to this position and he don't want an old teacher to come in the way to his dream project. Even after many attempts of negotiation by the builder through his left hand man, Shanmugam, masterji doesn’t turn up. All the residents along with masterji’s son try to convince Masterji to accept the offer. But still Masterji sticks to his word.. “I want nothing. I just want to spend rest of my life in this society”. But the residents feel that the money builder offered is the only solution to their personal problems. So soon they start isolating Masterji. The rest of the story is about how Masterji resists the builder and about how the residents who once used to respect Masterji go against him plotting ways to ‘remove’ the only block from their fortune !!
The author Aravind Adiga is gifted with storytelling skills. The way he develops characters in his books is brilliant, the characters would be so real that they should be given birth certificate. I liked his prize winning book “the white tiger” and the story line here in “last man in tower” is better than that. But this book is very slow, than "the white tiger". I enjoyed his first book more than this. The story picked pace from the middle. As the story precedes the fight between Masterji and Shah soon turns into fight between Masterji and the other residents in the society. The struggle by the Masterji fighting alone against everyone is described well. Though the character of the builder Shah was developed well initially, in the end he did not play big role.
Many parts don’t add anything to the story and the first 200 pages are used mostly to develop the characters in the society, the builder and his assistant. I liked the way he showed in his books about how the needs of the people change them. You cannot say they are good or bad. The circumstances just drive them to do those things.
In “the white tiger” he talked about various conditions in dark side of India but in this he focused on a single society in Mumbai.
I like the author’s style of developing simple characters and show how they would react in different situations.
If you liked Aravind Adiga’s style of writing in “ the white tiger” then you will surely like this one too.
2 comments:
I haven't the "Booker -winner" yet, and am not familiar with his writing style :) I think I should read White Tiger first. Good review.
I felt WT was a quick read compared to this. Do read it. You will surely like AA's style of writing. Thank you.
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