BOOK
TITLE: Unsettled
ISBN:
978-1-927826-07-2
AUTHOR:
Neelima
Vinod
GENRE:
Fiction/
Indirom
NUMBER
OF PAGES: 72
FORMAT:
Digital
SERIES
/ STANDALONE: Standalone
REVIEW
BY: Dhivya
Balaji
HOW
I GOT THIS BOOK: We thank Naheed of Indireads for
giving us this copy for review
SUMMARY:
The
hundred-room house is a rich tapestry of memories and hidden secrets, a dark,
forbidding place rumoured to be haunted by a vengeful Yakshi.
Propelled by a desire to save their marriage, Divya and Raghav journey to the
haunted mansion in search of the mythical Scrolls of Love.
Written
five hundred years ago by the banished court poet Shankara, they are fabled to
have the power to heal and reignite lost love. Is this just a legend, or are
the couple heading towards a chilling destiny?
REVIEW:
Unsettled is
tagged as ‘A Search for Love and Meaning’. It is a tale that combines a touch
of fantasy / history and modern day problems. Divya is a Keralite who has
married a Maharashtrian Raghav. She has a happy life until she starts
suspecting that her husband is in an affair with his old flame, Anu. Doubt
starts eating her mind as she sees Raghav talking with Anu one day, standing
close to her.
Unable
to concentrate on her work and feeling bad about her marriage, she consults a
psychiatrist who advises her to take a vacation. Divya heeds his advice to
spend a few days in her ancestral house in Cherakad, Kerala. But before that,
she convinces Raghav to attend one session with her. As the doctor sees Raghav,
he pulls him aside and asks a favour from him, to which he agrees.
Alternate
chapters of this story are written in the past, like a legend / myth handed
down over centuries. It follows the life of Shankara Sastry, a poet and his
life with a yakshi, who lives in the big house in Cherakad (the house of
Divya’s grandmother in the present). The Yakshi looks for love, unable to grasp
the fact that souls in the spirit world do not merge well with humans with
mortal bodies. She traps Shankara in her web and tries to elicit love from him
via lust. But Shankara realises his folly after some time and tries to escape
the place. But outsmarting him, the Yakshi traps his words and poems in
‘Scrolls of Love’ in the big house, leaving him as a shell of the man he was.
Raghav
and Divya arrive at the big house and are amazed and frightened by its size and
wild growth. But once they go inside, they’re entranced by the sheer magic of
the house, and are trapped by the Yakshi, who lusts after Raghav. How they
escape the house and how they save their failing marriage forms the rest of the
story.
The
story and the plot are more a mix of whimsical and fantasy. There are abstract
verses, the kind traditional poets wrote. The author has a clear poetic soul,
but sometimes, a casual reader finds these not only distracting, but also way
out of the necessary parts of the story. The characters are well etched in the
present (the final chapter revealing the link of the past/present stories is so
sudden). Read this book if you like your romance novels to be slightly exotic
and eccentric.
WHAT
I LIKED:
The
continuous shift between present and past stories, the descriptive narration
WHAT
COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER:
The book
comes across as too much into fantasy for a romance novel. Sometimes it makes
you wonder if it is for ‘light reading’.
VERDICT:
If you like
your stories to be peppered with the unusual, and can tolerate abstract
narratives and hidden meanings in romance, this book is definitely for you.
RATING:
3.4/5
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Neelima Vinod spent her childhood being schooled in
the Persian Gulf and holidaying in the warm, dreamy climes of southern India.
Writing about the supernatural is an inevitable outcome of contact with the
heritage of the subcontinent. She has acquired her M.Phil. in English
literature and worked as editor, teacher and writer. She now lives in
Bangalore, India.
Her current obsessions are her twin
sons, the books on her shelf and off it, and her poetry blog.
EDITIONS AVAILABLE: Digital
PRICE:
Rs.
131 for Kindle edition
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