I finished reading 3 of his novels starting with ‘One night at the call center’, ‘2 states’ and ‘ the 3 mistakes of my life’. I have heard good and bad reviews about him and had to read myself to comprehend. Of the three I liked ‘the 3 mistakes of my life’ the most. The story starts with the author getting a suicide note from a certain Govind Patel. He freaks, starts a search, finds him alive at a hospital in Gujarat. The story is narrated by Govind which is about his own life starting with him opening a cricket shop with his 2 other friends to how he ends up in the hospital trying to commit suicide.
The story revolves around the 3 friends...one having passion for cricket and sports...one set up to be a priest trying to escape his own destiny and third Govind- his love life, friendship and what he is at best - math and business. I liked how the story is set in 2000-2002 and intertwined with real events that happened during that period like the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, the exceptional win by India in the 2000-2001 Border-Gavaskar series with Australia and the Godhra Train burning. I found the fiction with a backdrop of reality very appealing.
I found his exposition to be bold and divergent with his character sketches deviating from the normalcy and entertaining as well. But just when you think that, he succumbs and disheartens with a very bad taste of melodrama.
The subject matter of '2 states' would have struck me as rather naive if not for the few interesting conversations I have had with my good Indian friends at work who are from different parts of the country. For a Bengali, Delhi is North India - it really is true that most folks from the north do not know that there are 4 different languages in South India (and that we can't understand each other) - they collectively know South Indians as Madrasis - it really is a big deal if a girl from Lucknow gets married to a guy in Bombay (whereas to me its all just north India).
After reading 3 of his books I also find a similar trait in all of them, a signature he leaves in his characters and their idiosyncrasies. I now have his first book ‘Five points Someone’ in my library queue. Curious he has numbers one, 2, three and five in his book titles...maybe he'll write one that starts with 'four'.
The story revolves around the 3 friends...one having passion for cricket and sports...one set up to be a priest trying to escape his own destiny and third Govind- his love life, friendship and what he is at best - math and business. I liked how the story is set in 2000-2002 and intertwined with real events that happened during that period like the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, the exceptional win by India in the 2000-2001 Border-Gavaskar series with Australia and the Godhra Train burning. I found the fiction with a backdrop of reality very appealing.
I found his exposition to be bold and divergent with his character sketches deviating from the normalcy and entertaining as well. But just when you think that, he succumbs and disheartens with a very bad taste of melodrama.
The subject matter of '2 states' would have struck me as rather naive if not for the few interesting conversations I have had with my good Indian friends at work who are from different parts of the country. For a Bengali, Delhi is North India - it really is true that most folks from the north do not know that there are 4 different languages in South India (and that we can't understand each other) - they collectively know South Indians as Madrasis - it really is a big deal if a girl from Lucknow gets married to a guy in Bombay (whereas to me its all just north India).
After reading 3 of his books I also find a similar trait in all of them, a signature he leaves in his characters and their idiosyncrasies. I now have his first book ‘Five points Someone’ in my library queue. Curious he has numbers one, 2, three and five in his book titles...maybe he'll write one that starts with 'four'.
Chetan Bhagat - I read 2 books and his style of writing is just not my cuppa. At times it just sounds too simplistic. I do understand his angle in 2 states but it is too filmi for my liking. I had a review of 2 states on my blog somewhere
ReplyDeleteMust be an enjoyable read The 3 Mistakes of My Life by Chetan Bhagat. loved the way you wrote it. I find your review very genuine and orignal, this book is going in by "to read" list.
ReplyDelete@vini - yes, I totally see what you are saying..his style is very simple and lots of instances in his books are too 'filmi', to a point it sounds very immature at times. But at the same time I think he also has a good chunk of interesting facet to his narrative that keeps me interested.
ReplyDelete@rohit - Thank you.