Book Review : Some Very Dignified Disclosures

BOOK DETAILS:

Book Title : Some Very Dignified Disclosures

Author : Anumita Sharma

ISBN : 9789387849068

Publisher : Pratishthaa Films and Media 

Genre : General Fiction

Publication : 2018

Pages : 253

Format : Paperback

BOOK BLURB:

It is an ordinary summer evening in a remote village near India and Nepal border; Roli’s mother and grandmother are quarrelling beside the well of their dilapidated feudal mansion. Roli is lurking in the courtyard; no one from her joint-family pays attention, and suddenly her father appears and clasps his wife’s throat. Roli watches in horror and envisions her mother’s spirit releasing from the dead body. Her future gets haunted by the twin spectre - mother’s ghost and father’s crime.

The narrative moves to a small town, in the large household of a village acquaintance, where Roli shifts for higher studies, and encounters various fascinating lodgers, including an eccentric priest, who collects sundry items on streets to construct a house, and catches an exotic bird which dazzles the neighbourhood, a perplexing night watchman, whose mysterious doings make the priest lose his mind, a bored wife of a sailor, who dabbles in occultism, a scholarly librarian, who convinces Roli to accept her troubled past, and the unhappy wives of her landlord play an intriguing role in her attachment to another of the tenets- a temperamental young man, who becomes Roli’s love interest.

The protagonist is an imaginative teenager. She loves reading and is attracted to people with mysterious backgrounds – very much like the characters of her favourite novels.

A sympathetic village woman gifts her amber necklace, which smells like ambergris, and details many supernatural incidents involving it. Does the necklace hold magical powers? Will the fragrance of ambergris capture the man she loves? Can Roli find success on the treacherous winding roads of adulthood?

RATING: 3 ☆'s

REVIEW:

First of I would like to thank the author for the review copy in exchange for an honest review and would also like to extend my gratitude for waiting patiently for the review to come. Here I would also like to apologise for unavoidable delay.

Coming to the book, the blurb from the back cover draws you in and makes you want to dive right into the book and that's what happened with me... but then the book ticked with me on certain levels and not so much on others. So here's what I feel about the book -

WHAT I LOVED:

1. Beginning and Ending --- I simply loved how the author has began the story on such a powerful note and the feeling returns with a sense of deja vu at the end of the story. The connectedness also gave a closure to the book with the protagonist's life coming a full circle.
2. Characters and Character Development --- since the book traces the protagonist's life, there are many characters involved who become an important part of her life. Author has done a wonderful job at giving each character a different personality and has painstakingly provided a detailed background for development of each character.
3. The Language --- for me personally, language is quite important and to see a new age Indian author writing a beautiful book with respect to vocabulary and language is pure delight considering the crap that most new age Indian authors are writing

WHAT I DISLIKED:

1. Narration --- the narration style makes it a very slow read and at times it even feels like a drag.
2. No Punch Plot --- the plot lacks the punch. True the protagonist is imaginative and cooks up different scenarios and she even meets variety of interesting people, but still there is no punch in the story. It's just like you are reading lengthy descriptions of the people and their lives that the protagonist met in her lifetime.

THE VERDICT:

The book with its twists and turns is definitely an interesting read albeit a slow one - which basically translates that for me, it weighed higher on too descriptive side than interesting side.

However, if you like descriptive books and character development is more important than the story itself, it's a must read for you because the author has done a splendid job developing the characters - even with so many characters to the story, each one is unique and has an interesting background story.

READ, IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR:

• Characters and Character Development
• Autobiographical Fiction
• A Narrative rather than A Dialogue

In the end, I wish the author success in all her future endeavors and thank her once again for trusting me to review her book.