Author: Chetan Bhagat
# of Pages: 320 (paperback)
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Indian
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Synopsis: Six friends work nights at a call center in India, providing technical support for a major U.S. appliance corporation. Skilled in patience–and accent management–they help American consumers keep their lives running. Yet behind the headsets, everybody’s heart is on the line. Shyam (Sam to his callers) has lost his self-confidence after being dumped by the girl who just so happens to be sitting next to him. Priyanka’s domineering mother has arranged for her daughter’s upscale marriage to an Indian man in Seattle. Esha longs to be a model but discovers it’s a horizontal romp to the runway. Lost, dissatisfied Vroom has high ideals, but compromises them by talking on the phone to idiots each night. Traditional Radhika has just found out that her husband is sleeping with his secretary. And Military Uncle (nobody knows his real name) sits alone working the online chat. They all try to make it through their shifts–and maintain their sanity–under the eagle eye of a boss whose ego rivals his incompetence. But tonight is no ordinary night. Tonight is Thanksgiving in America: Appliances are going haywire, and the phones are ringing off their hooks. Then one call, from one very special caller, changes everything.
Review: This was a borderline between one star and two stars.
I usually reserve one star rating for the books I really really hate. However, I saw on that the average rating for this book is 2.49/5 stars, so I had extremely low expectations when I began reading this book. These low expectations actually made me this story readable. Perhaps without any bias, I would have felt differently, but I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as the reviews were telling me it was.
Why would I read this book if there were so many bad reviews? Someone recommended this book to me, but I have no idea who. I'm not sure if Goodreads is buggy and accidentally added it to my recommended shelf, but either way it perked my interest as to how a book could be so bad.
One Night at The Call Center is the soap opera of books. Just because it exceeded my expectations doesn't mean it's a good book (any book that has any sort of plot/structure could exceed the expectations I had). If you don't think anything exciting could happen in just one night at a call center...you'd be right. Yes there were several DRAMATIC events that happen in this one night (and plenty of Shyam having flashbacks to past dates), but the way it's written is not very enthralling. Think The Office, but worse; everything is very mundane, and the "big" events that happen are usually due to people's ridiculousness.
Spoiler alert: everyone in this book is to some degree miserable with their life. Shyam particularly has a bad attitude that makes this read as unpleasant as his personality. The people at the call center seem to think Americans are stupid, yet they are not geniuses themselves. They come up with dumb plans to meddle with each other’s relationships, and the men (especially Shyam) act like they have more hardships than women just because they’re male.
If this is an accurate portrayal of Indian people's view of Americans, women, etc., then at least I can say I've learned something. At the very least, I can say I learned something about the author and what perspectives he has or has been exposed to.
Would I recommend this book? Nope, not to anyone.
(And yes, he really does thank Bill Gates and MS Word. Microsoft and MS Word seem to be an obsession of the author's).
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