TITLE: S.O.A.R
– Success Over Adversity Reigns
AUTHOR: Abir
Mukherjee
HOW I RECEIVED THIS COPY:
I thank Kamal Paneru for this review
copy.
BOOK SUMMARY:
Frustrated with their current jobs,
Uday, Adhyayan, and Rajasekaran team up to start an innovative business,
non-existent in India until then. Ignoring all pragmatic aspects of life, they
chase their dreams with immense pleasure. However, their journey is no
cakewalk, as they confront financial crisis and rejections soon. Uday plays a
business trick to triumph over that uninfluenced market; it works initially,
but soon boomerangs, blowing the team apart. The police arrests Uday accusing
him of illegal activity by his organization. Were there any blemishes in their
plan or was it just a typical Indian market, reluctant to accept an
un-experimented concept? Will they be successful in implementing their
innovation, staking their hard earned money, stable jobs, relationships, and
life 'S.O.A.R is the story of chasing a dream, quandary between desire and
responsibility, friendship and love. Join the gutsy journey of three young
entrepreneurs.
BOOK REVIEW:
S.O.A.R – Success Over Adversity Reigns.
The first thing that drew me to this book was its unique title and its equally
engrossing summary. S.O.A.R is a simple story of three people and their
families, their aims in life, their past, present and future. It is a chronicle
of hope, despair, longing and eventual success over all adversities. Three
friends, Adhyayan, Uday and Rajasekaran work in an office together.
Circumstances in their life and their priorities as they go through turbulence
are what the story is all about.
The premise/ plot
of the story:
The premise of the story itself is
interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention. The story clearly shows the
difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in India. The professional journey of the
individuals that clashes with their personal lives and their hopes and ideals
is one roller coaster ride of emotions. Adhyayan, or Adi is struggling with a
loving wife Srishti, unable to devote enough time for her even though he loves
her deeply. Uday, who has had a troubled childhood, growing up without a
father, thinks that life is about making a name for himself in business and
doggedly goes behind his dream with a sole purpose. Rajasekaran is a timid man
from Chennai who has landed a job in Bangalore and falls in love with Sneha, a fiery
rebellious Bengali, struggling with parents who don’t care much about her.
General Story
Development:
The background story of each character
is presented in bits and pieces through the book and it is left to the reader
to make the connections and inferences. If you follow the book from cover to
cover, you will be able to fully appreciate the back – stories. If you are a reader
who skims through paragraphs to quickly finish the story, you will miss out,
for instance, on why Uday is so insistent on making his dream come true even at
the cost of losing his job. Or why Adi seems to be oscillating between nations
and what his actual priorities in life are. And if you don’t actually carefully
read and absorb every line, you will never know that Raja actually speaks Tamil
in the book!
The pace of the
story:
For the story to be engaging,
engrossing and complete, the necessity arises for it to have back stories and
flashbacks. But the transition between the flashbacks and present events is not
smooth. Sometimes the readers are quickly brought back to the present or
abruptly taken to the past and it would leave anyone momentarily disoriented.
The author could have used a date wise chronicling or at least some such
differentiation to make the readers understand which part of the story is the
flashback and which part is the present.
Also, there are moments when some
events are left to the reader’s guess and some important life changing moments
are written in passing lines. The story of Srishti’s baby totally caught me
unawares. I had to read through the lines again. It was mentioned in the
passing, and considering the importance of the event, it could have had a
little more dramatic effect. This again reiterates the feeling that to get the
true feeling of the story, we would have to read it line by line.
The language,
grammar and phrasing:
A story needs powerful memorable prose
/ dialogues as much as it needs a good plotline. A good plot could fall flat if
the writing doesn’t match it. The feelings of each character could be expressed
with a much deeper impact on readers based only on the flawlessness or fluency
of the language. This story’s writing needs a bit more polishing. It would have
worked wonders and made the already interesting story much more memorable and
this book would have become a comfort book that people would read again and
again if the language had been a bit more structured. There are obvious grammar
errors and some unavoidable typos that ruin the fast moving plot. But these are
not very major and definitely not unheard of.
The use of certain words does seem
like the author created the lines just to use synonyms of the more popular, and
fitting alternatives. Some words do seem vaguely out of context and using their
preferred normal alternative could have been a better option. Thankfully,
Raja’s method of speaking in email abbreviations was commented upon in the
story itself. But a seasoned reader cannot help but feel that sometimes the phrasing
in the book is like Yoda speaking. (The title should have been warning enough.
It did sound like an improbably confusing acronym. But don’t let it deter you!)
The Overall Summary:
The book will not disappoint you. The
story is engrossing and the plot is thick with all the elements necessary to
make a bestseller drama. The language is not much of a hurdle either. You can
easily understand what the story is about. If you could get over the language
and event placement, and delve into the story as such, you would appreciate the
nuances and the actual plot. This book has the potential to become a major
commercial success. Go for this one, you would really enjoy the friendship between
the lead characters, the dreams, aspirations and over the course of the book
you will find yourselves travelling with the characters themselves.
RATING : 4/5 (Purely for the content. The story could work wonders with a little more polishing!)
RATING : 4/5 (Purely for the content. The story could work wonders with a little more polishing!)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Abir Mukherjee was born and brought up
in Bardhaman, a small town of West Bengal. He is currently based in U.S.A
having completed more than 8 years as an IT Professional. He has completed his
B.E. in computer science and engineering in 2005 and started working in
different software MNCs. ‘S.O.A.R’ is his second novel. Blackbuck Publication
has published his first novel, ‘As Life Has No Undo’.
He loves to sketch and write in his
spare time. He writes to entertain people, not to teach them how to live life,
how to be successful in life or any other philosophical lessons.
PURCHASE LINKS:
Amazon.in: (Rs. 125)
Flipkart.com: (Rs. 106)
Crossword: (Rs. 125)
Landmark: (Rs.88)
nice :)
ReplyDeletehappy with the work :)