When I read the reviews about this book, everyone had appreciated the way how the story was told in reverse. Making one wonder, why a middle-aged woman, happily married for decades, with her childhood friend, ends up pushing him to his death. It immediately makes one to take sides - debating who would've been the victim and who the abuser. Straight forward thought would be to side with the lady, stereotyping the guy as the abuser means nothing fancy and yet another life mimicking story. If you make the lady the vamp and the husband a hinderance for her lifestyle, well, looking at the newspaper nowadays, it is becoming a fatally fashionable thing as well!! So where is the novelty in the novel?? Well, how about starting with the ending and leading to the beginning? Pretty much this is how Swanson would've ended up with this novel I guess!!! He has literally written the book from start to finish only to label the chapter in descending order!! Now, that is some idea, especially in case if the theme is murder, you start by revealing the who and how, the 2 basic cruxes that hold the plot and end up describing the why, delaying dragging it to the extent possible. All for the smallest of small twists at the end about a camera, that could've very well been defunct or displaced or repair or removed even after so many decades!!! And to top it, there is no pressing reason why the hero...lead male character rather, ends up committing a double murder on behalf of someone he met after several years, fully knowing that she went ahead and married someone rather than waiting for him or reaching out to him. And also, for a fact that he was in a happy relationship with someone as well!!! Why go to all those extents when the end goal was not even the money inherited by the lead lady!! There is a son character as well, who seems to have been edited out or underdeveloped or forgotten totally, for the character will anyway loose its relevance when the story is moving backward. The ladies of Swanson novels mostly end up killing more than one people in the course of the story and ditto goes for Wendy as well. And like most of his novels, you will never like any of the characters, for they lack the very thing - character! Every one of them invariably would've done something gruesome. While few may spend the whole story repenting about it, some end up relishing the same. But the common aspect being chronic alcoholism, which seems to be a common behaviour across most of his novels. But again, even before you start reading it, you know for sure that this is not Booker material, but more of pulp fiction!! For those who like pocket size novels in tamil, this one would be right up your alley! Kill your darlings is nothing but bottle new in wine old.
What makes a drama series tick, in OTT, that too in Tamil? The question should've been pretty straight forward and not as difficult as it is for making a successful movie, for drama series are dime a dozen across scores of TV channels and none of them are found wanting for audience. The more the cry the merrier the TRP. In that context, the only challenge that OTT platforms might've had while streaming tamil series must've been to choose the path - either the well trodden and worn out cryathons aligning with Satellite channels or try for something genre specific like how they do across English and other foreign languages. This is where Heartbeat series in Hotstar finds the fine balance between being a soap oppaari (no pun intended) in tv and carving a niche OTT audience. While the setup might've been familiar one for Hindi audience with so many series happening on hospital based storyline, i guess this is a first for tamil. The first season was more on establishing the...
Comments
This is why I love your reviews. You have panned the book, but in a gentle way.