Getting a life 101

This isn't going to be her real job. Never mind that Little, Brown and Co signed on a debutante writer for two books and offered a staggering $500,000 advance""50 times the $10,000-odd most unpublished authors get. Even the film deal with DreamWorks doesn't really matter. Kaavya Viswanathan is going where the real money is: Wall Street. Of course, that's after she graduates from Harvard University in two years' time.

In the meantime, though, her book is taking her places. How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life is apparently not modelled on Viswanathan's life, although the similarities are uncanny. And Opal's life is almost as interesting as Viswanathan's.

The only daughter of a doctor couple who emigrated from Chennai to the US when she was a toddler, Viswanathan started writing her novel while still in high school. An "oh, and did I tell you I'm writing a book" mention to the coach who was helping this straight-A student prepare for college admissions set in motion the rollercoaster of events that culminated in this book""and also a Harvard admission for its writer.

Harvard is the locus of the book as well. When she's just six, Opal's parents hit upon their HOWGIH plan""How Opal Will Get Into Harvard. For the next decade or so, the trio works with single-minded devotion (obsession?) towards this goal. Whether it's moving into a good school district with its (initially) unaffordable rents, cello lessons, four foreign languages or even welding classes and courses in mosaic arts, Opal has done it all, and all with just one aim: to be the perfect Harvard applicant. It's not that she hasn't enjoyed these activities""Opal is the quintessential nerd, founding science clubs and reciting primary numbers for relaxation (she gets up to 809 before the end of the book).

But it all comes undone when the dean of admissions asks her the one question she hasn't prepared for: what do you like to do for fun?

That's an alien concept to a girl for whom admission to Yale is the worst-case scenario. But the dean isn't all bad: he gives her five months to, well, learn to have fun and enjoy life, before she appears for a fresh interview. Initially devastated, the Mehta family quickly rally around and construct their new plan, HOWGAL (How Opal Will Get A Life).

It's simple, really: in the next four months, Opal needs to become the most popular girl in school, experience romance and get wild""be a normal teenager, in short.

Only, it doesn't quite work that way. Not with parents who throw themselves heart and soul into the project "" Opal's father now speaks only in slang and listens to 50 Cent and Jay-Z, while her mother speed-reads her way through stacks of Elle Girl and Teen People, in between watching marathon sessions of The O.C. and Real World""and a heroine whose heart is really in solving the Fermeculi Formula, not in high-volume mascara and jeans from Habitual. It's nerve-racking for poor Opal, but a delightful romp for the reader.

Opal Mehta could be any high school student in America""having grown up there and not long having left high school herself, Viswanathan is on sure ground there. She's writing about stuff she's familiar with: as the only child of affluent parents, and having studied in a good school, she knows all about what actually goes on in school corridors, who wears what, how they speak and what they eat.

Where she slips up, is when she's writing about the Indian connection. Misspelt words, a distinct South Indian touch to a Punjabi family and other inconsistencies take some of the charm away.

And, of course, the cliches gallop across the pages in reckless abandon. The romantic interest, the bitchy girls who decide who's hot and who's not, the earlier companions left by the wayside while Opal embarks on her get-with-it programme... then the denouement and the epiphany of sorts where Opal realises what's really important. Yes, it's rather yawn-inducing at times, but let's cut Viswanathan some slack, shall we? She was just 17 when she wrote this book.

Which immediately makes you shake your head in wonder. If she's writing like this at 17, what will she be when she grows up? Oh yes, I remember now. An investment banker.

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HOW OPAL MEHTA GOT KISSED, GOT WILD AND GOT A LIFE

Kaavya Viswanathan
Time Warner
Price: £2.99; Pages: 314