Customer Rating:  
Summary: A very entertaining read
Comment: I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting from this book. Maybe more of a counter-culture feel? It was there, but it was subtle and not what I thought I'd be getting when I bought the book. There are separate stories that eventually end up intertwined, but it takes longer than I thought, and they didn't interact with each other as much as I expected. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The characters were real and well-developed. The story was interesting and realistic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and clever
Comment: Pithy, witty writing; entertaining, touching, and funny view of American society by a provincial, dopey, riotously out-of-it young Indian engineer. Other characters were amusing. Couldn't get enough of this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wasted!
Comment: This is one of those books one wishes one hadn't started. I couldn't quite put it down for keeps, but I really wanted to. At times the text was so pedantic that I wondered will there be a quiz? Predicable from beginning to ending. Worse boring. Kunzru must have phoned it in from ultima Thule. I rarely keep checking to see how many pages are left to read, but I often did with this one.
This is especially disappointing because his first book, "The Impressionist" was everything this one wasn't: gripping, riveting, engaging, charming and thrilling.
I had to wonder was Kunzru given a two-book contract? Was this the result of a legal agreement with a deadline? There's really no other excuse for failing with such spectacular license.
The ending is a complex and wordy fizzle that seems fabricated by a writer who had no real ending in mind and so borrowed from all the B action movies ever made. Worse, there are multiple plots that seemed to be shuffled together from old outlines.
Kunzru has a new book coming out soon. I'll approach it warily, hoping his original contract wasn't for three books and the new one isn't another boring flop.
Forewarned is forearmed. Beware.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ultimately unrewarding,
Comment: Having been gripped by Kunzru's debut novel, The Impressionist, I was left disappointed by this follow-up novel. The contrast between the two novels could not be more stark. While the Impressionist was filled with detail, strong characterisation, and what seemed like a lot of background research, Transmission appeared rushed and cliched.
Arjun the central character as an Indian programmer lacks social skills and is a dreamer, Guy Swift is a shallow management consultant with a knack for good spin, while Leela Zahir is an Indian actress with an overbearing mother.No attempt was made to introduce any ambiguity into these characters, and so having any sympathy for them was difficult.
A strong plot could have made up for the lack of empathy towards the characters, but it was incredibly weak. The subject matter seemed more apt to the dot-com period, rather than now. There was no suspense. The fall-out from the Leela virus could have provided much, but simply allowed the characters to realise the ultimate dreams. Simplistic, cliched and unrewarding.
If you've read The Impressionist, don't read this, it will only disappoint.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The whole thing just feels empty...
Comment: I recently relocated from San Diego, CA to Noida, UP (India) - coincidentally both places are locations where portions of the book take place. I started reading it because a friend gave it to me when he came to visit. Apparently he had just read it on the plane or something. I have never read anything else by this author, so I didn't quite know what to expect.
I finished the book in about 2 days of reading, and the only word I really have to describe the experience is "emptiness". Overall the characters are shallow, lacking any real depth. I just don't care about any of them, or their plights. Nor did I find much of the book "funny" as some other reviewers have stated, and a lot of the plot is just plain silly (not to mention the dialogue). I felt like the author was trying to weave together the lives of a bunch of individuals from around the globe just to illustrate some point about the modern world and how technology (or the pitfalls of it) connects us all.
Astonishingly, the book seems to end right in the middle of the plot and finishes everything up hastily in an epilogue-like final chapter called "Noise". I really felt like more happened in this final chapter than happened in the rest of the book - all of it much more interesting! One of the main characters actually gets married, travels the world, and dies in the epilogue, almost as if it where a footnote to the rest of the story.
I wouldn't recommend this book unless it happens to be lying around and you just need to kill some time.
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