A brave but uneven attempt - Rated 
This is a brave book with good intent but very unevenly written.
The premise - about a mathematics prodigy, and her relationship with her family - is interesting. Yes, I want to know what goes on in such families and what the dynamics are. What makes it more interesting is that the family in question is an Indian family trying to find its way in Britain so they are different in more ways than one and the `immigrant theme' gives added texture (although the family's trip to India half way through the book seems like a tangent).
The best part of the book is the final chapters, with the girl prodigy Rumi cracking up and running away, and the complete incomprehension of her family. It works well. But the rest is very patchy. We do not really get how controlling the father is. The character of the mother is only sketchily drawn. So much more could have been done with the characters of the parents who are key in this tale.
There is unevenness in Rumi's own psychological portrayal, and often I do not find her convincing. Sometimes she seems older, sometimes younger.
Although the book is easy to read and moves on at a good pace, the dialogue is often clunky, the prose can be stilted. And the narrative tense inexplicably moves from past to present tense which does not help. I was particularly irritated by the forced metaphors and stilted similes. Like: "his heart, which was softening like a marshmallow on a fire..." The time Rumi spends on computer games was described as "time that had a special currency of its own, like chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil". Dreadful.
The story of the girl maths prodigy that made to Oxford and then ran away was a big story in the newspapers some years back, and yes, the parents were portrayed as pushy and controlling so I kind of knew what was going to happen. I was interested in Nikita Lalwani's interpretation, but somehow she did not really enlighten me as I had been hoping.
It's really odd that this book made the Booker longlist. Nikita Lalwani may go on to write better books, but this one is definitely not `Booker' class.
Nicely written, story could be better - Rated
'Gifted' is the story of a young Indian family living in Cardiff, whose lives revolve around their ambitions for daughter Rumi, a teenage maths prodigy. It's nicely written with an elegant turn of phrase, but in terms of plot it could do with some work.
The first half of the book was better than the second. Quite a promising story builds up, and it's a good topic to write about. The family's efforts to assimilate into the UK are really well written and I felt it gave me a real insight into the daily dilemnas for an Indian family living in the UK. However, in the third part the story somehow peters out. Events seemed to run away with themselves and plausibility was lost. There were too many loose and ends and the end was inconclusive and disappointing.
There is real potential here for some very emotive writing yet it didn't quite move me in the way I had hoped. Rumi's various romantic dalliances were rather contrived and I found it hard to believe in some of the events. Too much was unexplained, like how Rumi was allowed to (apparently) give up all other school subjects in favour of maths, why no one at the school considered the possibility she was being pushed too hard, and how not only her father but half the country seemed to find out about her meeting with a boy in Oxford.
In terms of chracters, mother Shreene is probably the most interesting and complex, and I felt that she brought alive the difficulties of trying to adjust to a different culture whilst not losing a sense of your own identity. Rumi was sympathetic and likable, but it wasn't as easy to empathise with her as it might have been. Totalitarian father Mahesh is rather stereotypical and the sections which attempt to explain his behaviour don't add anything. Peripheral characters are very underdeveloped and sketchy, which is a shame.
All in all, it was worth reading and I would read another book by the same author. It's just a bit unpolished, in terms of the story itself rather than the writing, and I'm sure this will improve in subsequent novels.
Fascinating premise, but muddled and disjointed - Rated
I expected to like this book. I had read promising reviews and the premise sounded - and is - interesting. However, I felt it was let down by the writing, which I found muddled and long-winded.
The story: Rumi is the only daughter of Indian immigrants living in Wales. On her first day at school, the teacher identifies her as being exceptionally bright and recommends that she join Mensa. Instead her father, Mahesh, decides that he can guide her to develop her fullest potential and so Rumi embarks on a rigorous program of study with few diversions allowed. As she grows older and starts to get interested in boys and popular culture, she increasingly chafes at the constraints put on her - not just by her father, but by teachers, journalists and others who all seem to have a view on how this "gift" of her extreme intelligence should be utilized.
When I read, I like to be involved with at least one character in the book. I don't always have to like them or approve of what they do, but I do need to at least care what happens to them. I admired how Lalwani shows us Rumi's view of the world (everything is a math equation), but I didn't particularly care about any of these characters and I actively disliked the father. The book felt disjointed, as if Lalwani was trying to cover too many bases. Also, the writing alternated between the present and past tense, for reasons that I could not understand.
I'm really surprised that this book made the Booker long list. I think the idea behind the novel is very interesting, but Lalwani failed to deliver on it. I almost gave up on it, but I kept reading and I'm glad that I did because it picks up towards the ending when Rumi hits her teens. Even though I found it flawed, it would be a good choice for a book club as there is a lot to discuss about family relationships, the experience of immigrants, and the importance that our society places on intelligence.
A "gifted" debut - Rated 
I have to say if I had seen this book in the shops I probably wouldn't have picked it up. The cover is really quite awful, and effectively pigeon-holes it straight away as another Brick Lane/White Teeth. But, while there are obviously parallels with those two very successful books (Asian characters in the UK; the difficulties of trying to live by two different cultures at the same time), Gifted is much more than EthniLit By Numbers.
It is the story of Rumi Vasi and her family. Her parents are from India, and moved to Cardiff for a better life before Rumi was born. When Rumi is around 10 it is discovered that she is a gifted child in Maths, and her severe father Mahesh decides that to "nurture" this gift she must be subjected to a rigorous regime of study so that she can become another Ruth Lawrence, and go to Oxford early. And so the struggle begins. While Rumi is exceptionally talented at Maths, she is also just a normal girl growing up in the 1980s. She is curious about boys, about make-up, music, and making friends with people her own age. But Mahesh has her on a tight leash, and even stops her from playing with her little brother because she should be concentrating on her study rather than playing "children's" games.
Essentially this is a coming-of-age novel, but Nikita Lalwani tells it with compassion and power. The resentment that Rumi grows to feel towards her parents (her mother Shreene feels she has to back up Mahesh though he has effectively suppressed her ever since their marriage - she is an university-educated woman now forced to work in a mere administrative capacity for "propriety's" sake despite it being clear she could become so much more if she were given the chance to flourish) and the resentment she ultimately comes to feel towards Maths itself is wonderfully evocative. Any book that has me muttering under my breath at the characters wins my vote!
But I wanted to know so much more about Mahesh and Shreene! I wanted there to be more of a exploration of the irony that while Shreene's education has been suppressed by Mahesh, Rumi's has been put under a microscope, and concentrated. I felt at times that Mahesh was slightly caricature-like, and even a little cardboard. The ending felt ever-so-slightly rushed, though I was happy with what the ending was in itself. I just felt it could have been explored a little more.
A novel of great power and enormous anger - Rated 
Gifted is a novel of great power and enormous anger.
As the title suggests, the novel centres around a young girl, Rumi, who is found to have a gift for maths. Her parents - particularly her frightening father - decide the gift must be nurtured at all costs.
There are three principal characters, Rumi and her parents, Mahesh and Shreene. As a father figure, Mahesh would not have been out of place in Victorian Britain. He is strong, pious, bullying and hypocritical. Having inveigled his wife, Shreene, to follow him to Wales from India to make a better life, he sets about rejecting western values whilst enjoying them to the full. He prohibits his wife, an educated woman, from flourishing and exerts a huge degree of control on her time. Whilst this makes Shreene initially angry, she eventually seems to adopt the same values as Mahesh in order to make it appear as though she is in control o her destiny.
Then, when Rumi's gift is discovered, Mahesh finds a new opportunity to exert his control. Rumi's life ceases to be her own - a tight regime of libraries, study, discipline and obedience are imposed. Rumi tries to find small outlets for her individuality, sneakily reading fiction and pilfering sweets, but the brutality of her father constantly wins through. All Rumi can do is dream of outgrowing the nest and making an early journey away to university. Obviously, with her "gifts", Rumi finds a degree of celebrity which is not always helpful, particularly given her destiny to be younger and less mature than her peers. Both in Cardiff and in Oxford, she is something of a lab rat - expected to be a second Ruth Lawrence - but is at heart a likeable and ordinary girl.
The characterization is superb. The three principal characters strike so many chords. People like Rumi, Mahesh and Shreene exist - and not just within the Indian community. The novel is a caution on the results of trying to live your life through your offspring. It is a caution about attaching undue value and focus to a small part of a person. It makes one question the benefit of unbidden "gifts" that turn out to be white elephants. It also makes one wonder about the role of bystanders who are prepared to witness such appalling abuse without questioning it, just because it happens within the middle classes.
The level of hate that Rumi feels towards her parents - and especially Mahesh - just drips from the page. Rumi seldom says - even dares to think - harsh thoughts of them but the simmering, deep hatred is inescapable. Throughout the novel, one wills her to break free and realize her potential. At the end, one is left with envious admiration for her courage in daring to do what so many of us have wanted to do. But as to whether she has succeeded in breaking free, the reader is left to guess.
It was interesting to see in the acknowledgements at the end that Nikita Lalwani seems to have good relations with her own parents. She claims the work was inspired by Vik Sharma, presumably a friend or partner. To have produced a work so vivid through only vicarious experience is a wonder.
This is a work of immense power that will stay with me for a long time.
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