Pappettan is my favourite Malayalam movie director by all standards. But I was told he was a better writer than a movie maker.
That spoilt the party for me.
This novel – my first Padmarajan work – was such a huge disappointment.
Cliches and boring melodrama mar the otherwise manageable plot. The characters are extremely inconsistent and unreal.
The only saving grace was the unpredictability of the narrative – as often seen in his movies -- and the author’s attempt to show different perspectives to a single event.
Why have Malayalam authors – the very few that I have read – been obsessed with the “over-descriptive” style? Why do they blindly follow Hardy and Lawrence?
The most ridiculous part of this novel – as also a few other Malayalam novels I have read – is the unrealistic English conversations among characters.
Even in this day and age, I doubt whether urban middle class or lower middle class families use English as a conversational tool between family members – or even among friends. There would be even little chance of this happening in the 1970s in a rural set up – even if the characters are well off.
Padmarajan peppers the narrative with statements like “I say you get out!” and “leave me alone” to add that dramatic feel. But they turn out to be damp squibs.
Because there is the least possibility of one using an alien language when one is emotionally charged. When in anger, grief or desperation, most of us instinctively use our mother tongues to express ourselves. Not Pappettan, it looks like.
Anyways, I guess after finishing the two other books of his that I have I will simply stick to his movies.
If you intend to read this novel, forget it. Try out something else.
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