“Chetan Bhagat's novels remind me of movies by Danny Boyle. They have a great premise, and are good but strangely unsatisfactory at the end. You leave the hall/ the book with a feeling that this could have been so much better. But it is still "paisa vasool" :)
You are unlikely to remember them for anything exceptional for very long though.
Finally, both of them don't really end very well, somehow it seems a bit hurried and forced in many cases.
R2020 is about three friends, 2 boys and a girl in Varanasi. It obviously involves a love triangle, and speaks about a lot of contemporary issues like power, politics, corruption in low to high places, with special reference to higher education. But finally it is about Gopal, the rags to riches Principal of Gangatech college from whose view point the entire novel is written.
Aarti - his love interest is certainly dealt with in greater details with her confused yet believable personality being something we care about, but unfortunately, the other characters, especially his 'close friend' Raghav are fairly uni-dimensional and not very interesting.
Finally, the end is quite 'filmy' and preictable. I guess Chetan Bhagat is already finalizing whom to sell the rights of the film too.
The topics of corruption and youth empowerment are very topical, especially with Anna hazare agitation going on, but are handled in a predictable and superficial manner.
The simple writing style, as always, makes it a fun, easy, time pass read though, and at the price he sells his books, you will almost never regret buying them :)”
golu wrote this review Friday, January 13, 2012.
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