Slumdog Millionaire Book Review

Hello there people, it's Filippa. Today I will be doing a book review of "Slumdog Millionaire" by Vikas Swarup. We read this book in school so that's why it hasn't been on "Filippa's Currently Reading", and that's also why it has taken me longer time to finish Finale: because I had to read a really boring book of 360 pages in three weeks at the same time as I read Finale. Which I still haven't finished by the way. 

 

But anyways, the book is about a 16-year-old boy in India, from the slum. He participates in a quiz where he wins a billion rupees. But the makers of the quiz show starts to wonder how a boy frpm the slum could know the answers to all the 13 questions. So they arrest him, believing that he has cheated. But a girl comes to this boy (Ram Mohammed Thomas is his name) and says that she is his lawyer. And since no one has proven that he cheated on the quiz he is free to go with this girl. So then he tells her about how he found out all the answers, at what point in his life he got to know them, so there are 13 chapters in the book and in each one of them he tells a story about one of the answers. And all the chapters are at different times of his life. Some when he was only 6, some when he was 14. 

What I liked about this book was that the idea behind it was amazing. That a "slumdog" would participate in a quiz and win a billion rupees. And then that every chapter was a new question was also a really cool idea. 

However, I did not enjoy the book very much. It was pretty boring to read, too many descriptions for everything so my brain got really confused and I didn't remember much of the things I read. And then there was also the fact that all the chapters and the stories Ram told weren't in chronological order, so that got me even more confused. And the book wasn't really my genre either, so of course I didn't enjoy it as much because of that, too. 

I've heard some people say that the book was really good and that they really enjoyed reading it, but that I don't understand. But then again, one of those people was my english teacher, and she doesn't have any taste when it comes to books...

Another reason to why I don't understand the people that said they enjoyed the book, is that I didn't get to know the characters very well. I did find out that the main character was a nice, honest and brave person, but there was nothing deeper than that. I didn't find him interesting in any way and there was nothing extraordinary or funny about him either. There was one thing though that I liked about him, and that was his life story. Even though it was a slow book and I burned some extra callories trying to concentrate on it, the story of his life was pretty interesting and extraordinary, unlike the character himself. 

But yeah, I don't really have anything more to say about the book. There's a film too, which I haven't watched but we will watch it soon in school, since everyone should've finished it by now. 

I would give the book a 3/10 for reasons that I have already mentioned. I hope you enjoyed this entry even though it wasn't about any fantasy, sci-fi or dystopian book.

~ Filippa ~