REVIEWER: Well, Book! What do you think of this approach to your review?I'm imitating your technique, avoiding straightforward prose for something more creative...
FIREPROOF: I don't like it. It's distracting.
R: Hmmm. Funny you should say that...
F: For a review, it's distracting. A novel, on the other hand, lends itself to all kinds of styles, forms, fonts and layouts. Why, I've even got a couple of photos thrown in to break up my text! Two chapters of play-script, some poems and...
R: I know, I know. You've used the events of the '02 Gujarat riots as the foundation for your narrative andyou've told your story through the voice of a young man called Mr Jay (which is just the initial letter of yourauthor's surname. I confess it really worried me, after I got to the end of you).We're introduced to him moments before his wife gives birth to their first child, on the night the riots begin. But the child turns out to be grotesquely deformed and the story takes a long detour through thefather's anguish...
F: Ahh! You reviewers are heartless! And stupid too. The child was a highly sophisticated literary device, a counterpoint to the mayhem taking place on the streets. How could you fail to be moved by that heart-wrenching description of the misshapen infant? Followed by the struggles of the hapless father to look after his pathetic blob of a child?
R: Yes... but...
F: ...and what about the terrifying denouement, which reveals the Higher Purpose behind thechild's tragic appearance? What of the glittering insights into the intricate circuitry of our mortal lives, of cause and effect, action-reaction?
R: When you're writing about real events, and especially when the events are as brutal as the 2002 riots, turning up the volume is pointless. The truth is unbearable enough. Frankly, I just skipped the descriptions. Reading the actual news stories was so awful that re-reading them as fiction was like scraping the bloodied remains for the grisly details.
F: Then what about my clever device, using the voices of the dead to describe events, ending with dark threats from the next world...
R: Oh my dear! If I believed in the next world, I wouldn't bother reading books,I'd spend every waking hour calling down curses upon the heads of all the villains we share this world with! I find the notion of otherworldly justice utterly insulting to the memory of the dead. Vengeance, blood feuds, supernatural punishments only compound the horror. What we need is ordinary, rule-of-law justice, andthat's what we so rarely get.
F: So... I suppose you didn't like me?
R: I'm afraid not. Your intentions are sincere, but as a book, you're disappointing.
F: That's harsh. After all, given my subject, it's almost immoral to dislike me!
R: (sighing) I know that only too well. But a worthwhile subject's not enough,don't you see? The more wrenching a story, the more crucial to tell it cleanly. By using Mr Jay as your emotional focus, you reduce the victims to mere footnotes, literally!Don't you see how grossly unfair that is? Particularly when it turns out that the protagonist is...
F: Stop... you'll give the plot away!
R: And another thing: the whole book unravels if you know the ending.That's fine for thrillers and murder mysteries but in literary novels, it's a serious flaw.
F: (stiffly) I'll never agree with you so you might as well shut up!
R: (sighing again) Oh well. I tried.
