Marry me, Stranger

Breaking another long silence Chubby Cheeks is back to the blog with a fresh piece of writing on a book by one of her favourite Indian authors, Novoneel Chakraborty. So, the review on his latest book Marry me, Stranger would be the first post here after a very long time.

So far I have read only his debut novel, A Thing Beyond Forever and I loved it so much that I started reading this book with high expectations. The title made me expect a story about strangers falling in love or get into a marriage which might lead to an everlasting love, but how silly of me to jump into such conclusions! The book was as unpredictable as one could ever expect a book to be!

The protagonist, Rivanah Bannerjee is a 22 year old college fresh-out who moves to the big city of Mumbai, to face her life all alone for the first time without her parents around to help her in this and that. She is smart enough to secure a job in a high profile IT company, confident enough to take the challenge and move out to Mumbai, focused enough to what to do with her life and strong enough to stand upon her ideas about her personal choice and marriage. All in to that she was even soft enough to fall in love with Ekansh, her college friend and loyal enough to be such a faithful girlfriend for him all the past four years. But life is not a bed of roses, she soon finds out. Each day of her life becomes challenging than she could even dream of and she had to go through her own share of happiness and sorrows.

The prologue gives a superb screen opening to the readers. It starts with the expectation of a sweet encounter of love and halts, leaving us with a bunch of questions in the mind which make us run through page by page searching for the answers. I should say it has the potential to get you glued to the story from its very first page. As I mentioned earlier, the story is quite unpredictable hence the journey through the pages would be quite adventurous. You would never get bored, rather be quite excited to reach the end.

Writing style is excellent as I expected. Of course the writer excels in penning down another great story which is quite above in quality from the average Indian novels we come across nowadays. Flow of the story is smooth and very gripping, and its written with a rich and appropriate vocabulary.The best thing about the book is that it relates to the young people scattered every nook and corner of the world. We experience love, heartbreaks, friendship and quite a lot of expeditions one could go through in their young life so the story well connects with every reader at some point or the other. The protagonist and the other characters would come up with the same questions as the ones which might have popped in our minds when we got stuck at these type of situations and the author has smart answers, wise phrases and different point of views for us to think upon and stimulate the self realization.

The only thing I’m unhappy about the book is its climax. I personally believe that it was a very incomplete situation to pause the story to be continued in the next book. Its of course a great cliff hanger but to lead to the next chapter rather than to a whole new book. The book ends with a clear cut hint about the stranger but comparing with the rest of the past episodes, the clue at the end itself might not be the correct path for the actual back-story. I feel there's too many things unresolved to stop the story right there to be continued with the next book. Holding our breath until the truth reveals is the real entertainment and adventure in a book but that is when we only have to start with the very next chapter that instance not wait for many months until the next book launches! And at times I felt that the title is not that relevant to the content of the story although it really is woven around a stranger.

But all in all the book is a great hit. Totally intriguing and a real page turnover. I believe that it is rich in every aspect. A story that is sweetened with love, salted with suspicion, spiced with horror and garnished with romance, it certainly is a delicious read one could never miss!

Ending my note with a short and sweet phrase I came across in the story. there are many I would love to quote here, but this was a fresh idea which particularly amused me to great heights.

“A sucessful marriage depends on ignorance”

“I chose to ignore my own desires otherwise it would have been difficult to stay with him and raise you. And I’m sure he must have also ignored a lot of my things.”