Book Review: That's My Story - Vinay Mashalkar
22:46:00
Falling in love is a beautiful thing, that's the first line of the
blurb of this book and this gives you hope.... but then this book, which is
supposedly a feel-good love story, ISN'T. Although I'm not a big fan of
romance, I signed up for reviewing this book, purely because it’s February, and
since my real life doesn't have much romance, I might aswell read some to get
into the Valentines mood. So did I succeed? Not even a little bit!
That's My Story is simple love story. Its about a boy seeing a
girl, and falling in love with her, the typical family issues that every single
Indian romance writer needs to include, the other woman, the predictable
"twists and turns" and finally, the happily ever after. I may be
biased, but when I read a love story, I expect it to have some novelty. Don't
get me wrong, I have nothing against a feel good love story, but then there is
only so much predictability a person can tolerate till they throw the book at a
wall. Did I do it? Well, I threw it on the bed (a couple of times) because
I frankly I couldn’t take the sugary sweetness in the book anymore.
Onto the characters, you have your blue eyed boy, Vikram, who is
the most optimistic person I’ve ever seen…who works in the IT industry. He sees
a girl from his window, one fine day and without any valid reason. He says that
its her “overall charismatic personality” that attracts him. Well, I somehow
cannot understand how you can see a person’s personality from a distance. I
always thought you’d have to actually interact with them to comment on their
personality. Oh well, I figured everyone has their own way of expressing
themselves. As you move further along, the book starts throwing extremely inappropriate
words to express different situations. There is a sentence which rather made me
laugh….it replaces subconsciously with unconsciously. Honestly, imagine reading
a sentence that implies you need to be unconscious to feel the joy in life.
There are quite a few instances where I felt that the writer, at a loss for
appropriate adjectives, simply typed a similar sounding word, hoping it would
mean something in the vicinity of what he is trying to express. It is shocking
how such books manage to get through the editor’s desk at the publishing house.
I would understand if it was just one or two such mistakes, but there are so
many grammatical, syntactical as well as plain literary mistakes, I cannot help
but get annoyed and frustrated. If you read to improve your language, this book
will not help, but rather ruin it. I understand use of colloquial dialects in
parts, but then you cannot keep writing a novel, the way you would narrate a
story to your friends. It simply makes the reader disgusted.
Apart from the atrocious writing, another problem is the
one-dimensional characters. I cannot help but feel that the characters needed
fleshing out a bit more. The girl works as a CA in an MNC and the boy works in
IT. That’s it. That’s all you know about their professional life. Seeing as he
is narrating the story, you’d think that any young man in the current world,
would have some professional ambitions. The whole purpose of his life is to
simply make this girl happy. While this is good for dreamy fiction, seeing as
the writer tries to imply that it’s a story that is plausible, you can’t help
but feel that it’s grossly inaccurate. I honestly kept waiting for a little
more connect to the characters, but simply didn’t get it. What is an attempt to
show how much the narrator loves the girl, turns into a rather terrible
portrayal of a girl who practically runs the boy’s life with her whims and
demands. Of course, you have the other girl who is in love with the very boy
because he is so dedicated to the heroine. Honestly, what self respecting girl
will stay in love with a boy she knows she will never get? But yes, again, we
are expected to believe it all under the premise that’ love is like that only’.
Everybody wants to be the next Chetan Bhagat these days....that's
what you feel when you read this book. I'm afraid that Mr. Bhagat managed to
gain popularity purely because of the novelty factor of his first novel, armed
with rather decent (correct English understood by common people) writing
skills. This book, I’m afraid to say has neither of the above traits. It says
that Mr. Vinay Mashalkar is an Engineer and this is his first attempt at writing.
Well, frankly, you can tell that’s the case without the explicit mention of the
same. I would not recommend this book and I suggest if you wish to read his
books, you wait till the writer manages to hone his writing as well as story
telling skills. There’s nothing new here, except a few bad errors in writing “The
English” as the writer would call i
Name: That’s My Story
Author: Vinay Mashalkar
Publisher: Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd
My Rating: 1/5
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