The Book is provided by Arudhaa Club in exchange for a genuine review.
BOOK REVIEW OF- Solitude Revisited
By Manaswita Ghosh
• Paperback
• Publisher: StoryMirror Infotech Pvt. Ltd. (2017)
• ISBN-10: 938630547X
• ISBN-13: 978-9386305473
THE PLOT IN BRIEF-
About The Book: Solitude Revisited is a confession, a realization and
the musings of a pensive young heart. There are a million stories
around us, but few are told. This book is about those invisible souls
you encounter every day, but never care to observe. Sometimes, the
eyes need to look further than just what they can fathom, the heart
needs to seek an anecdote and the mind needs to frame a memoir for the
soul — to survive the vastness reality throws at it. That’s where
fiction steps in, presenting an alternative universe for the mind to
thrive in, so it may preserve its individuality and brood over its
reflections. Thoughts demand to be contemplated and preserved just
like history, for they tell infinite stories no sane mind can
perceive. Solitude Revisited is all but real; it’s a confidante and a
confession, an artist and his muse, a whisper and a madman. Listen to
it and you may find yourself, listen to yourself and you may find it.
THE TITLE-
In our busy schedule of our life, we forget to realize ourselves. The
title very beautifully asks you to find yourself- once again. Find
meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It
doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most
spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical
imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have
to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and
discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be
afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t
find meaning but ‘steal’ some time and give it freely and exclusively
to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you
antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need
to breathe. And you need to be. The word Solitude gains a special
importance here. It doesn’t imply you to be lonely, but it says to
spend time with yourself. Living alone is a skill, like running long
distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters,
protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a
language: to have music always so that the silence doesn’t overwhelm
you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is
filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact
size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less,
or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not
being.”
REVIEW OF THE BOOK-
The book has several elements in it which is narrated through short
stories very elegantly. People aren’t always what you want them to be.
Sometimes they disappoint you or let you down, but you have to give
them a chance first. You can’t just meet someone and expect them to be
everything you’re looking for and then be angry when they’re not every
hope and aspiration you projected onto them. It’s foolish to believe
that someone will be what you imagine them to be. And sometimes, when
you give them a chance, they turn out to be better than you imagined.
Different, but better. It beautifully describes the image of
realization along with confessions. We’re so wrapped up with
egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the
mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we’re
involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t
get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and
saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?
The concept of listening to your inner voice also turns out to be one
of the themes of the stories. You may think that you should listen,
should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward,
stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the
dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something
to understand or make sense of. But I know the truth: I know from the
nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down,
have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees
rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, and trying to piece
together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a
weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.
Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging
at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to
do—the only thing— is run.
Life is a bowl of cherries. Some cherries are rotten while others are
good; its your job to throw out the rotten ones and forget about them
while you enjoy eating the ones that are good! There are two kinds of
people: those who choose to throw out the good cherries and wallow in
all the rotten ones, and those who choose to throw out all the rotten
ones and savour all the good ones. Because what is life? Life is
fundamentally a mental state. We live in a dream world that we create.
Whose life is truer, the rational man of action pursuing practical
goals of personal happiness and wealth or the philosophic man who
lives in a world of theoretical and metaphysical ideas? We ascribe the
value quotient to our lives by making decisions that we score as
either valid or invalid based upon our personal ethics and how we
think and behave.
The idea of emotions was described very vividly. I feel that
detachment is not the absence of emotion, it is the process of
becoming one with the Oneness that is the Universe. To be detached, is
to realize that the fullness of all there is, is too much to react to
with just one emotion, one thought, or any bias. To be detached, is to
acknowledge all, without owning any of it. To be detached, is to
summon forth the whole entirety of understanding, to the fragment that
is the void.
I loved the plot, themes and the characterizations. Each and every
story gives us a different moral which links our life.
RATINGS-
Overall I would like to rate the book 41 on a scale of 50.
4 stars out of 5
1. Originality of the plot and sub plots- 8/10
2. Net emotions in the story- 9/10
3. Usage of words and phrases-8/10
4. The title, cover and the illustration-8/10
5. The net impact on the readers- 810
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Manaswita Ghosh is a journalist with The Telegraph Calcutta. She is an
optimist who believes each day has beauty in store for those who seek
it, no matter how bad a day it is. She loves to observe and pen her
thoughts as they occur to her; penning stories has been more of an
obsession to her than a casual pastime. Penguin Books India, The
British Council, First Step Corp., and Talent Flush Creations have
published her in the past. Of every amazing experience this world has
to offer her, she is crazy about travelling, reading and fine dining..
Reviewed by-
Sayan Basak
Kolkata
