Book Review: "Q&A", by Vikas Swarup

This is the book that inspired "Slumdog Millionaire." And I think that is how it has to be worded (not "the book the movie was based on"), because "Slumdog Millionaire" was definitely not based on this book. About the only similarities were that he was a kid from the slums who went on a quiz show, and that there was a character named Salim.

I'm glad I saw the movie first. If I had read the book first, I wouldn't have wanted to see the movie, and I would have missed out on a wonderful thing. This is one of those rare cases where the movie is [much] better than the book.

One problem is the lack of character development for the supporting characters. The main character in the book, Ram Mohammed Thomas, is constantly on the move, so he's with new people all the time. There's never time to get to know them, which makes it hard to identify with his feelings toward them, which makes it hard to care about him. Another fault I found with it was that it was almost crass in parts. I don't like that.

Perhaps another problem was that I was expecting to like it at least as much as the movie. But I didn't. It just was too different.

So in conclusion, I can't really say this is a book I would recommend. It's fine if you're curious as to what inspired the movie, but overall, I wasn't too impressed.