Assuming you're a tourist in town for a week, the italicized framework gives you advice on the best walking tours. You go to the Kittur train station and hear the story of a small black Muslim porter boy and the mysterious benefactor who pays him to count the trains. You go to St. Alfonso's boys' school, where a bomb goes off in the classroom of the chemistry teacher with a speech impediment.
From story to story the reader learns the geography of the place, so that before long you know where to find all the shops on Umbrella Street, how steep Lighthouse Hill is and how dangerous the Bunder warehouse district is. Since the vision behind the stories is so uniform, a momentum builds that unites them all into a torrent of exhilarating, endlessly-surprising narrative.
Every story is packed with little character surprises, as you watch the disadvantaged and unlucky in the town of Kittur, the booksellers and bus drivers, newspaper reporters and cycle-cart pullers, cooks and conmen and excavation site laborers, defiantly struggle on with their compromised lives. Adiga tells just enough to create moral dilemmas for the characters, who are then forced to make difficult decisions. His tales have shapes that catch you off-guard, unexpected heroes, unanticipated alliances. They're serpentine and tricky--not in the writing, which is straightforward, but in the thinking behind them, the way they open up into decisions you don't see coming.
The style is swift and economical. There's no lingering, no wasted words, with a delight on almost every page, dozens of unanticipated turnarounds and personality-revealing encounters. Above all, Adiga's indignation at unfairness gives this crowded little volume a heartwarming unity, a feeling of Chekhov-like compassion that somehow redeems the soul-killing poverty and debasement with the grace of humor, spunk and understanding.--Nick DiMartino
Shelf Talker: A series of linked stories set in a small town on the southwest Indian coast, filled with morally complicated characters, unexpected heroes and redeeming compassion.