Book Review: The Story of an Aspiring Author

Author: Ryan Arya (Debut Novel)

No of Pages: 154

Publisher: Plowman Press

Date of Publication:  July 5th, 2014

Summary: (from Goodreads)

This is the story of a struggling and aspiring author. His fiancee and bookseller friend, who have confidence in his creative endeavours, only inspire and help him. He has confidence in his talent.

**The book has been sent by the publisher for a review and by no means the review has been biased or influenced**

Star Rating: 2.5/5

Title: The title 'Story of an Aspiring Author' is totally in sync with the story and projects a fair idea that the story is about the life and hurdles in the life of an aspiring author.

Title Rating: 4.5/5

Cover: The cover is simple and lacks colours. Although the landscape is pretty but it doesn't go with the theme of the book. A book's cover is the one which always attracts the readers in the first place. We have been told that the Author has a love for photography so probably he's behind the cover as well. 

Cover rating: 2.5/5

Characters: The protagonist Dhriti is the aspiring author and a confident guy who has faith in his writing but kind of adamant. He has experienced an array of obstructions throughout the book most of which were self imposed. He was somewhat stubborn and headstrong.

The other characters such as Urmi (his fiancee), Ratish Babu (the friend), his grandparents, the painters etc. had no significant role throughout the book and seemed more like supporting characters and had no impact on the lead character in any way. The other characters came into picture one at a time and disappeared as soon as they showed up. Only the fiancee got the chance to show up that too towards the end only.

Characters rating: 2.5/5

Review: The book set in the backdrop of Calcutta, India has the author visiting his grandparents who encourage him to study for IAS exams and do something worthy with his life. The story moves forward with him running off with his fiancee and continues with all the problems that he's facing to get his book : Splinters of The Sun published. The story is highly disruptive and fails to be a page turner or an attention grabber. The author has made the story rather jumpy which makes it an uphill task to finish off with the entire story. The 2 chapters that he has mentioned from 'Splinters of Sun' were hard to make sense and should not have been mentioned unless the author wanted to at least give the outline of that story.

Review rating: 2/5

Appreciation: There is a wide use of good vocabulary which is not very difficult to understand.

Let downs: There have been some grammatical errors in case of the usage of pronouns which is probably the editing error. The story is rather dragged, uneven and lack seamless connection between the consecutive chapters. 

Final Verdict: Not recommended and I don't guess I'd be reading more of this author if I'm not convinced by his next book (if he's writing the next). Being it a debut, we might give him another chance to prove himself.

The book is available here: amazon.com

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