The Homing Pigeons By Sid Bahri-A Book Review

Love has always been a quintessential theme in the world of fiction. By all means it is a direct inspiration from real life and somehow wins all hearts. It may be a simple straight forward story or a complicated over the top Bollywood style tale full of songs, perils, tragedy but finally a happy ending. THP is a book of the latter kind.

This 318 paged novel is Sid Bahri’s first novel. It’s a simple book about two people reeling from the broken institutions of marriage in India where everything, including your future partner’s religion, caste, background, state, family details etc matter. But ironically, love is often ignored by parents. Even worse, they somehow convince their off-springs to forgo love and embrace an ultra conservative social idea. This is where it gets murky.

In this book, we step into the world of Aditya and Radhika,who were “best friends and secretly in love” since high school. Something I really liked in this book was the unique plot. Most books follow usual patterns or clichéd stories which unless complemented with exquisite writing, leaves the reader desiring for more from the entire experience. The Homing Pigeons on the other hand, has a unique plot although set in a clichéd timeline i.e. the recession of 2008. Maybe the whole “in-love-since-high-school” is clichéd too, but it suits the plot here.

Moving on to the book’s Achilles’ heel, I found the book to be little too over-the-top as well dramatic in nature, bordering nearly on unrealistic. The way the characters separate, meet again and carry out the entire cycle again is something that I really didn't buy into. Also, the story line is dragged down in parts by the sub-plots themselves.

As a whole, this book is a lovely read for a new mature reader who is trying to get into reading and at the same time, is a nice little read for bookworms looking for something easy on their eyes over the weekend.

Like: Easy to read, Simple characters, Earthly, Fluffy

Dislike:  A wee bit unrealistic, Bollywood like over-the-top plot may be a turn down for most people

 

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