How many times in your life do you come across a book, after reading you simply frown and wonder “Gosh! How did I waste my week behind this one?” or “What was the point of this story?” or “Why the hell I didn’t stop after 100 pages?” Rohinston Mistry’s first work Such A Long Journey evokes similar emotions, and lets you feel terribly disappointed and wonder how author of a excellent book such as A Fine Balaance could come up such a amateurish, contrived and boring story; that too in his debut!. In essence, Such A Long Journey is left nothing but as Such A Boring Story.
Such a boring story
And hence as this is a review, I must bore you too with the boring details of this book. Meet a boring family which will make your ancestors come alive and kicking out of their graves; the protagonist has a boring personality; neither does he represent the common man, nor does he represent his religion. Meet Gustad, the headman of a Parsi family working for a boring bank filled with mundane characters and boring idiosyncrasies of life. Meet his wife Dilnavaz who seems to have been created out of primitive era – a lifeless soul just there in the story to expose superstitious beliefs amongst women rather a character in the story. Meet their children a daughter who remains perennially ill, a son who is a misnomer in the story, and the eldest son whom remains pretentiously the most boring character of the book.
As if these many tired characters weren’t enough, Mistry allows himself to build a chawl with cliché characters, dogs, rats, cats and the rest. Then he mixes his ingredients with a culmination of rather strange incidents in books for no rhyme or reasons, people emoting for no reasons, people dying without purpose, and most importantly people on soul searching without much purpose. One never gets into the thick of things; one never feels for Gustad or his trials; at one point I was wishing Gustad kill himself to save the bore for us, however I was not the author.
Tragedy is the author’s forte, this much I have gathered, but forcing a tragedy is like making Devdas drink alcohol in spite of being married to Paro. The requiems of protagonists’ life fail to make any contact with your heart after the last contour in the story. The suspense track which has been tried hard to be kept, is seemingly crooked and devoid of any thought process or execution. Tragedy must strike characters out of nowhere, this much the author assumed, and as if to prove it out then goes on a killing spree, making extras catch an emotionallydrainingmemoriesfillewithcolossallosspathos effect on the protagonist.
Oh did you wonder why I haven’t told you the story? If there was any I did let you know. Whatever was bored me to death and I will save you the trouble.
Such a boring prose
Admittedly, one might unfailingly ask – “why the hell did finish the book?”. The answer is, Mistry is one of those authors who manages to keep your hopes alive by some skill. While most of other authors I did be throwing the book back at the wall, authors like Mistry and John Irving leave that door open with a little hope that a book might get better; alas that doesn’t happen. The author’s prose is arcane; It is as if he set down to write something else initially, and gradually then it turned into something else. He is also eccentric with some brilliant moments delved in the book, only to be surrounded by vagaries of mundane existence. His take on the holy gods and wall ceremonies are humorous and well handled.
Such a boring review
Forgive yourself for reading this boring review, and forgive me for writing such a boring review as well. It is as if I am in the hang of the book – a listless feeling has swept over me, and deprived me of any skill in writing. My only determination was to warn all my fellow msians against this book, and save your precious money.
Saying that Mistry is not a bad author; his second work was almost brilliant; I only hope he gets better with time. And as for me, my boring existence has left me with no new authors to read – thus I now take my sheathing brain towards Family Matters. Hopefully, that should get me back!
Meanwhile, avoid this one.