‘THE STORY OF A SUICIDE’ Book Review : Slow and Shocking!

Okay, so this is the first book review which I am putting on Swudzy. And this was a book that attracted me with the title and the promo video. The name of the book is ‘The Story of A Suicide’ and is written by Sriram Ayer. The whole book is available to read online at this link.

Watch the promo video here

The plot

The narrative of the book is about 4 individuals from the same college pursuing different courses. These characters involve Charu, a twisted but bold girl; Hari, a chubby boy troubled by his traumatic past; Mani, a boy who fought odds to reach where he is but recently attempted suicide after a set of setbacks; and Sam, a tech geek who has just seen a breakup from a serious relationship. The storyline features southern India and mostly Chennai at that, as the location.

Themes

The book majorly touches upon two social issues. One of them being the objectification of women and lack of understanding towards women. And the second one being the disgust towards homosexual people.

Flow of Interest

The book starts off great with brilliant imageries used in various instances. The introduction of Sam the first few scenes of Charu are some examples of that. It also touches upon the artistic side of the storytelling and an instance of a play featuring a conversation between Julius Caesar and Draupadi is used to a good extent. The character build up is really good.

However, the story slowed a lot in the middle for around 6 to 7 chapters. Where nothing much was happening and the characters were either just telling another story or dreaming with not much immediate impact. But as it turns out, most of that dreaming was directed towards the end.

The end is shocking. From what the story was telling before the last 5 chapters, I was expecting the book to end on a low note with some preachy stuff. But the last five chapters actually surprised me. What the surprise was, it is to be found out by you yourselves.

Use of References

Sriram Ayer has referred to multiple art forms and artists through various instances. Extracts from books, song lyrics and music description of popular artists and authors are quoted by the characters occasionally. Also, the author appeared to explain a lot of terminologies which the targetted reader base would be knowing already and the characters are bound to know being in a course which requires basic tech savviness.

Overall Thoughts

I personally thought the Ayer seemed to overdo the metaphors and symbolism by dedicating complete chapters to the cause. Also, there were a lot of repetitions that disengaged the interest. The whole conversation between two characters is repeated by one of them to a third character at least twice in the book. The book touched the edges of being preachy and pretentious but narrowly escapes. If asked, I would recommend this to a few of my friends just for the sake of the climax.

Read the book at http://www.storyofasuicide.com/

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