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librerin's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.0
I really enjoyed the witticisms about the self help genre at the start of each chapter, and I loved the last chapter. It was a bit of a melancholy book for me right now, but an interesting story told well.
swatreader's review against another edition
it's just like why does he write like that
catrowland's review against another edition
dark
funny
hopeful
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
I love Hamid’s prose! Funny at times, with richly painted descriptions, and a story that traverses time beautifully. This novel helped me see the good and gratitude in being a human who is alive and lucky to have what I do. I liked it a lot.
perlstein's review against another edition
5.0
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
Look, unless you're writing one, a review is pointless. You read a review so someone who isn't yourself can tell you what to think. None of the foregoing means reviews are useless. They can be useful indeed. This is a review. Its objective is to show you you should read How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.
You're reading How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and it strikes you that this second person narrative is both disconcerting and engaging. You hate you're reading the story of your life but, all the facts are wrong. Still, you like yourself enough that you stick with it. The narrative is specific enough that it feels unique and real, but vague enough with characters like "the pretty girl" to keep "you" in the story.
You enjoy the journey you take in the book. From a poor kid, working at a DVD store, to a teenager with a broken heart over the pretty girl. You start a criminal business, and go legit. You travel the world and take a wife. You don't love her until it's too late. Your business is big, your wife leaves you, despite how much you love her and your child. Your heart breaks, litterally and figuratively as your health suffers with age. You reunite with the pretty girl, who has lived a life all her own. Your business falls apart and you become poor. You're happy to spend time with the pretty girl. You die.
And you cry when you die. You say fuck this, I gotta stop crying when I read books. But, you let that go and you're happy you cried. You hug someone. You cry some more. You admit to yourself you cried when you learned to love your ex wife even though she had moved on. You cried when you read your mom passed. You cried thinking of your son.
And though this book is about How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, a country you know nothing about, about a life you know nothing about. A life with traditions and culture and a way of doing business and a way of loving all of which you know nothing. You still cry.
You still believe this story. Because it's not a story of you or me. This story contains you, and you contain her, and this review, and me writing it, and I too contain you, who may not even be born, you inside me, though not in a creepy way, and so may you, may I, may we, so may all of us confront the end.
#HowToGetFilthyRichInRisingAsia #MohsinHamid #Novels #Reading #Books
Look, unless you're writing one, a review is pointless. You read a review so someone who isn't yourself can tell you what to think. None of the foregoing means reviews are useless. They can be useful indeed. This is a review. Its objective is to show you you should read How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.
You're reading How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and it strikes you that this second person narrative is both disconcerting and engaging. You hate you're reading the story of your life but, all the facts are wrong. Still, you like yourself enough that you stick with it. The narrative is specific enough that it feels unique and real, but vague enough with characters like "the pretty girl" to keep "you" in the story.
You enjoy the journey you take in the book. From a poor kid, working at a DVD store, to a teenager with a broken heart over the pretty girl. You start a criminal business, and go legit. You travel the world and take a wife. You don't love her until it's too late. Your business is big, your wife leaves you, despite how much you love her and your child. Your heart breaks, litterally and figuratively as your health suffers with age. You reunite with the pretty girl, who has lived a life all her own. Your business falls apart and you become poor. You're happy to spend time with the pretty girl. You die.
And you cry when you die. You say fuck this, I gotta stop crying when I read books. But, you let that go and you're happy you cried. You hug someone. You cry some more. You admit to yourself you cried when you learned to love your ex wife even though she had moved on. You cried when you read your mom passed. You cried thinking of your son.
And though this book is about How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, a country you know nothing about, about a life you know nothing about. A life with traditions and culture and a way of doing business and a way of loving all of which you know nothing. You still cry.
You still believe this story. Because it's not a story of you or me. This story contains you, and you contain her, and this review, and me writing it, and I too contain you, who may not even be born, you inside me, though not in a creepy way, and so may you, may I, may we, so may all of us confront the end.
#HowToGetFilthyRichInRisingAsia #MohsinHamid #Novels #Reading #Books
lanternatomika's review against another edition
2.0
Chapter One: Recognize When A Novel Format Isn't Working
This is a review. A review is an assessment of the quality of craft or effectiveness of performance of a subject. But in a manner of thinking, we are always engaged in an appraisal of something or the other, whether we're evaluating something our eyes see or our ears hear, whether we're processing our position on how something tastes or smells, or even when we feel the touch of a lover and conclude conclusively that we would like to feel that touch for the rest of our lives. In this sense, one may say that our entire lives are comprised of a series of reviews, and in another sense, one may say that a book whose every chapter opens with a paragraph like this gets rather infuriating
The novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia purports to present a narrative in the form and structure of a self-help book, but it is evident from the very start that the author, its famed author, was unsuccessful in this cross-adaptation of format. One may suggest that grafting a fictional narrative onto a non-fictional self-help format is a futile exercise, and whether you agree or disagree with this notion, the fact is that the only thing HTGFRIRA has in common with self-help books is a pretentious and know-it-all style of writing that seems to say that, in order to get rich in Asia, you must be the third son of a village family that moves to the city and so on. It presents the particular experiences of a single (fictional) individual as a formula for getting rich, which is disingenuous on part of the author
Chapter Two: Plot Matters A Lot
In a review, you cannot dismiss a work out of hand purely on the basis of one of its qualities. A more comprehensive and analytical review may lead to a conclusion that the other characteristics of a work can outweigh the one characteristic that strikes you most annoying. In the case of a book like HTGFRIRA, it may be possible for the plot to make up for the shortcomings of the format
However, HTGFRIRA has a fairly weak plot as well, and one may deliberate on the extent to which the format chosen by the author compromised the quality of the plot. For instance, since the experiences of the protagonist and other characters are meant to be viewed as self-help advice, no characters or locations are named in this novel, which is a dangerous proposition in and of itself as names are the first means by which humans build attachment to other animate and inanimate beings. But the level of coldness engendered by the lack of names spreads throughout the tale, its events relayed with a cold and disaffected manner that makes all of it seem meaningless
When you reflect on this book in hindsight, you may think that nothing happened in this book, that it was just a collection of twelve vignettes from the life of some schmuck who succeeded in becoming modestly successful (not, as the book may suggest, filthy rich) at selling water, but this isn't the case. The book actually contains a few minor twists, a couple of major ones and some sociopolitical commentary on the society and culture of the unnamed nation that couldn't possibly be Pakistan no way no how. All of this has the background radiation of potential lurking throughout, but the author's insistence on this format and all of its caveats serves to damn the book. Allow me to express it thusly: it is not difficult to power through a book that's under 300 pages long, but the author really tried my patience on this one
Chapter Three: The Verdict
I'm gonna break from my satirical take on this novel's writing style to say that, as my first Mohsin Hamid read, I'm not going to dismiss the guy's work entirely. He has some solid insight and a Khalid Hosseini quality to him that may show better when he isn't attempting an experiment with a book. But I don't know, I have to say that this one is a hard pass from me
This is a review. A review is an assessment of the quality of craft or effectiveness of performance of a subject. But in a manner of thinking, we are always engaged in an appraisal of something or the other, whether we're evaluating something our eyes see or our ears hear, whether we're processing our position on how something tastes or smells, or even when we feel the touch of a lover and conclude conclusively that we would like to feel that touch for the rest of our lives. In this sense, one may say that our entire lives are comprised of a series of reviews, and in another sense, one may say that a book whose every chapter opens with a paragraph like this gets rather infuriating
The novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia purports to present a narrative in the form and structure of a self-help book, but it is evident from the very start that the author, its famed author, was unsuccessful in this cross-adaptation of format. One may suggest that grafting a fictional narrative onto a non-fictional self-help format is a futile exercise, and whether you agree or disagree with this notion, the fact is that the only thing HTGFRIRA has in common with self-help books is a pretentious and know-it-all style of writing that seems to say that, in order to get rich in Asia, you must be the third son of a village family that moves to the city and so on. It presents the particular experiences of a single (fictional) individual as a formula for getting rich, which is disingenuous on part of the author
Chapter Two: Plot Matters A Lot
In a review, you cannot dismiss a work out of hand purely on the basis of one of its qualities. A more comprehensive and analytical review may lead to a conclusion that the other characteristics of a work can outweigh the one characteristic that strikes you most annoying. In the case of a book like HTGFRIRA, it may be possible for the plot to make up for the shortcomings of the format
However, HTGFRIRA has a fairly weak plot as well, and one may deliberate on the extent to which the format chosen by the author compromised the quality of the plot. For instance, since the experiences of the protagonist and other characters are meant to be viewed as self-help advice, no characters or locations are named in this novel, which is a dangerous proposition in and of itself as names are the first means by which humans build attachment to other animate and inanimate beings. But the level of coldness engendered by the lack of names spreads throughout the tale, its events relayed with a cold and disaffected manner that makes all of it seem meaningless
When you reflect on this book in hindsight, you may think that nothing happened in this book, that it was just a collection of twelve vignettes from the life of some schmuck who succeeded in becoming modestly successful (not, as the book may suggest, filthy rich) at selling water, but this isn't the case. The book actually contains a few minor twists, a couple of major ones and some sociopolitical commentary on the society and culture of the unnamed nation that couldn't possibly be Pakistan no way no how. All of this has the background radiation of potential lurking throughout, but the author's insistence on this format and all of its caveats serves to damn the book. Allow me to express it thusly: it is not difficult to power through a book that's under 300 pages long, but the author really tried my patience on this one
Chapter Three: The Verdict
I'm gonna break from my satirical take on this novel's writing style to say that, as my first Mohsin Hamid read, I'm not going to dismiss the guy's work entirely. He has some solid insight and a Khalid Hosseini quality to him that may show better when he isn't attempting an experiment with a book. But I don't know, I have to say that this one is a hard pass from me
saazhar's review against another edition
4.0
As a South Asian, this book was haunting: I saw so much of my own country meticulously woven into the rich story and the fantastic prose that I forgot that it couldn't be my own country after all that the author meant to convey. The writing style, the prose, the narration - I really can't fault any of it. What did bother me, though, is that there are so few authors that can capture the essence of our countries in such few words - why can't there be more superb South Asian storytellers like Mohsin Hamid?
samwreads's review against another edition
4.0
Sparse writing, mostly to-the-point events, with poignant glimpses into the psyche and the occasional beautiful turn of phrase.
Second person narrative, employed here, is an interesting device which asks a lot of a reader (theoretically forcing empathy, or incurring alienation if the reader isn't having it). In this particular case I think it was largely successful, but along this line I was thrown by the lack of names for any character. I think it was done to make the story more universal, but it also severs a bit of that empathy that second-person narrative asks. People are pushed back to their roles as brother, mother, father, wife, assistant, pretty girl.
I loved loved loved the final chapter (aside from one pesky word/sentence as pointed out by another reviewer). Indeed, the whole book made me feel the weight of time and the fragility of the body moreso than even some of the heavy wartime novels I've read in the past year. Kudos for that.
Not much else to say. There's a lot of talent on display and I very much enjoyed the brief, powerful punch it delivers.
Second person narrative, employed here, is an interesting device which asks a lot of a reader (theoretically forcing empathy, or incurring alienation if the reader isn't having it). In this particular case I think it was largely successful, but along this line I was thrown by the lack of names for any character. I think it was done to make the story more universal, but it also severs a bit of that empathy that second-person narrative asks. People are pushed back to their roles as brother, mother, father, wife, assistant, pretty girl.
I loved loved loved the final chapter (aside from one pesky word/sentence as pointed out by another reviewer). Indeed, the whole book made me feel the weight of time and the fragility of the body moreso than even some of the heavy wartime novels I've read in the past year. Kudos for that.
Not much else to say. There's a lot of talent on display and I very much enjoyed the brief, powerful punch it delivers.
meshuggeknitter's review against another edition
4.0
A very clever way to tell a story and quite illuminating view of the development of a country's economy.
abassard's review against another edition
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I got this book from a used book store about a few days ago. I have read other books from Mohsin Hamid before and I was very interested in this title from its description. I was first a little put off by the second person narration, but Hamid uses it to subvert both the self-help and rags to riches genre that it became so addictively sarcastic as the plot picked up pace.
The story was really beautiful and it’s made even more poignant because of the novel’s sparse prose. In an age of globalization, where finance and machinery seems to become ever present in our daily lives, the love story between the narrator and the pretty girl is sincere, charming and effortlessly beautiful. I especially loved the ending, which made me tear up on the final phase.
The story was really beautiful and it’s made even more poignant because of the novel’s sparse prose. In an age of globalization, where finance and machinery seems to become ever present in our daily lives, the love story between the narrator and the pretty girl is sincere, charming and effortlessly beautiful. I especially loved the ending, which made me tear up on the final phase.
asurges's review against another edition
5.0
Not for everyone, but I loved its spare prose and very engaging story. And the end was where Hamid abandons the spare prose and writes one of the most beautiful endings I've seen in a long time.