Last Man In Tower — the critical reaction

How do you top a Booker winner? With difficulty, one imagines. But, in Last Man in Tower, has Aravind Adiga done his best with an impossible brief?
 
In the Guardian, Alex Clark argues that, while the novel ‘can tend slightly towards the schematic’, it has a ‘broader and more forgiving feel than The White Tiger’, though Adiga’s ‘anger at the India he describes…remains undimmed.’ The novel has ‘a gentler comic tone that finds affection as well as despair in poking fun at its characters’ pretensions and frailties.’ Overall, he presents ‘a picture that is as compelling as it is complex to decipher.’
 
Ceri Radford, in the Telegraph, finds Adiga’s writing ‘rich and lush’, though argues that it is ‘lacking in subtlety’ on occasion. She also takes issue with some of the characterization. Ramu Puri, who has Down’s Syndrome, is presented as ‘the idiot savant who whimpers every time someone turns on Masterji’, whereas ‘A lighter touch may have been more powerful.’