This came up in today's Strictly post - a cracker, by the way!
http://strictlywriting.blogspot.com/

Basically, The White Tiger is not my cup of tea, though I did want to like it. I don't know why I didn't. I wish someone would help me put my lukewarm attitude into words.

Caroline, why didn't you love it?

Oh god, I read it too, along with The Secret Scripture. Louise Doughty, who was one of the Man Booker judges that year, set us the task of seeing which one we would have picked, since the voting was very close. The trouble I had with WT is it's just so depressing. There was nothing of the better things about India in the book, it was all about the very worst of village and city life, of local politics, and the depths to which people will sink.
Although SS had it's faults - ie, the 50% of the book written from the psychiatrist's pov - it was full of optimism and hope, despite all the terrible things that happened to the mc.

For me it's this thing of not having an MC I can relate to, I think. I don't mind depressing things if I'm rooting for the characters, but he wasn't very nice, really, was he? And I know it's possible to have not very nice characters you can root for, e.g. The Talented Mr Ripley. Where you know he is a murdering little creep but a bit of you can't help but hope he gets away with it.

All the other characters too were relentlessly awful.

Yes, not one nice character in the whole book - except, for a time, the one the MC murders, but even he'd been corrupted by the end.

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I tried to read the Life of Pi afterwards, which is written in a similar 'voice' but I couldn't get the proverbial bad taste out of my mouth, left by WT.

Didn't go down well with anyone when we did it at my book group, this one. I just couldn't engage with the MC's voice.

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I hated SS too, ha ha! But I know most people really like it.

I've got SS, Caroline, but haven't read it.

I liked Rosamond's story, and the prose was great, but Barry can't write birthing scenes to save his life.