BOOK REVIEW OF- Beneath the Eyes
By Upender Reddy
Paperback: 134 pages
Publisher: Notion Press, Inc.; 1 edition (19 October 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1948032910
ISBN-13: 978-1948032919
A BRIEF OVERVIEW-
Everyone gathered around as the child opened his eyes. They stared at the monitor as the chip attached to the child’s optic nerve began to relay his vision on it. There was nothing. The child appeared to watch an empty corner of the room, focusing his eyes on something invisible. The people around followed his gaze, but could only see a blank wall. Puzzled, they looked at each other inquiringly. The child continued to stare.
“Look!” said Natasha, suddenly. The monitor on the table came to life, and a faint image began to form on the screen. As they all watched intently, the faint image began to form the dark shape of a human. In a few moments, there was a hazy outline of a woman staggering towards the door. The image soon became clear, taking the distinct form of a woman. Slowly, she appeared to come closer to the screen. All of a sudden, her face became clear. She raised her eyes and looked at them. Everyone gasped and fell back, frozen…..
REVIEW OF THE BOOK-
Although the central theme of the plot is horror and Thriller, there are several other metaphorical themes associated with it. Technology, for instance plays a pivotal role in the plot. The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to “grow” and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all things inherited and free. All things superseded in our progress of innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all.
Beneath the eyes reveals a very interesting message for us- More pathetic than the digital age is the people who love it. They buy right into the “newer is always better” ideology and they can’t seem to grasp that the fun of VHS tapes, super 8 film, darkroom photography and vinyl records is far more worthwhile and human than the cold, high-tech atmosphere of everything being digitized. As the 21st century progresses, yeah, we’ll have our Netflix and our cellular phones and our artificial intelligence and our implanted microchips – and future generations will have lost something valuable. Sadly, they won’t even know what they’ve lost because we’re taking it all away from them.
Yes, Of course there is a horror sense to the book and every page will make you thrill. At a moment while reading the book, I felt like In the illusion of delusion, between madness and lawlessness I exist. I dream about dreams, about illusions and disillusions and cold and madness and you… the source. Known and unknown and the eternity and the darkness flittering with my soul and on the outside of memories; cages and cages of feelings caught in a single line of dreams shackled to a thought.
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
POSITIVE ASPECTS-
THE UNIQUE PLOT.
THE THRILL OF THE PLOT
THE “BENEATH THE EYES” FACTOR.
THE LUCID LANGUAGE.
RATINGS-
Overall I would like to rate the book 45 on a scale of 50.
4 stars out of 5
Originality of the plot and sub plots- 10/10
Net emotions in the story- 9/10
Usage of words and phrases-9/10
The title, cover and the illustration-9/10
The net impact on the readers- 8/10
KUDOS TO THE AUTHOR
About the Author
Upender Reddy is a hard-core software professional in the IT field. As a voracious reader, he has harboured a long-standing ambition to author a good book himself. A sworn Hyderabadi with simple tastes but brilliant thoughts, Upender aims to create stories that compel, intrigue, challenge, educate, and entertain readers.
Reviewed by-
Sayan Basak
Kolkata
