I have a plan for this blog and I am crossing my fingers and hoping that my patience may win out and lead the plan to success. There are a few books that I have recently read that are one of three( this is a manageable number in a series and therefore will not tax my patience too much) I have liked the books and almost set out to write glowing reviews, I then realised ( considering the spotty attention being paid to this blog ) that some people would prefer to see the whole series review and therefore not miss much and I can elaborate and compare more effectively. I could have written this paragraph along with the first of my series review but since I do not have anything really fascinating to say about the book in question, the above plans had to be laid out ( I have to effectively write something that might make people look forward to my next post!)
Coming back to the book in hand ( not literally because I just happily replenished my unread quota at the library today) , I gave it only two stars on goodreads.
Because of a more traditional introduction to books in English in my childhood ( the obvious flow from Enid Blyton to Agatha Christie , Arthur Conan Doyle and so on) I have a slight aversion to either translated works or Indian authors ( I know that puts me in the snob category). To be clear, I would not term them bad books, it’s just that the sentence construction and the flow of the story make me uncomfortable. There are a few Indian women who wrote children/young adult adventure fiction published by Scholastic that are at my parents home at this time ( I unfortunately do not remember names ) whom I had read with pleasure . They did a good job with the story and despite incorporating obvious hindi dialogues in between, it does not make you miss a beat. I even re read them recently to confirm that it was not just my age at the time of the original reading that made me think so. All of this is to reaffirm that I try not to be a snob. ( Amitav Ghosh has been an obvious exception , I liked a few of his books).
The premise was interesting enough ( Yes, I am now at the actual review) . A known killer ( acquitted by the judicial system) has been gunned down. There are 6 suspects because they had guns on them. Then we are taken into a long journey into each of the 6 people’s lives the previous few months leading to this event. It is not the stories of the lives of the people that bothered me but how it was told. There was limited flow and as compared to his previous book, there seemed to be something odd about the whole thing. I could not put my finger on the exact thing that bothered me so I have to be this vague. The ending was not very satisfying but it did play a part in remedying a little of my reactions to the book. If you the reader is not as stubborn as me in trying to pick faults, give it a go! If you do like it, let me know why, maybe there is an angle I have not considered
Superfluous Reading 