Book Review: Beyond School by Chitra Anand

Do you know why I like writing book reviews? There are thousands of people who read books every day but you don’t see all of them writing reviews.  Then why do I?

Remind yourself of the feeling you get when you complete a book. That feeling is obviously different for different people and different books but there is one feeling that urges me to write a review. That feeling is the ‘hollowness’.

Once I complete reading a book, there is emptiness in my heart and that emptiness wants something. It wants me to recall whatever I went through while reading the book, to recall the world I entered and lived in for a few days, to recall and decipher the lesson I learnt from the book. This is why I write book reviews. It is my way of recalling what I need to.

Beyond School is the first book written by an educator – Chitra Anand. I happened to get this book through the Book Review Programme I am a part of but is this book good enough to be read by you? Should you really consider picking up this $5 (Rs.125/-) book and spend your time reading it?

About The Beyond School

The story of the book revolves around Shail, a 17 year old boy who dreams of becoming a great footballer but is brought face to face with the reality. He has to pass his board exams in order to work on his dream of becoming a great footballer and this is the thing he hates.

His parents Sushil and Urmila are trying to educate their son and make him understand what he really should be doing. For this, they take help of Gladys who acts like a mentor to Shail and many other students studying in the same school.

Beyond School is thought provoking story of lives of normal Indian people.

Review of the Beyond School

 “Never judge a book by its cover page.”

The saying would stay forever but it is the fact that the cover page puts the first and most important expression on the reader. The cover page of the book isn’t good. What I could see in the cover page is a football, books, an apple and probably these are set in the scene of a classroom.

For the first few pages, I thought that I am reading a book that isn’t meant for my age. A person younger than me would have been a better audience for the book. But that was the impression due to the ‘bad’ cover page.

The book, a fiction, tries to involve the reader in a number of serious issues that are relevant to many – pressure of parents on their children for studies, unrealistic dreams of teenagers to achieve BIG, failure of parents to understand the needs and thought process of their children, fear of corruption and death, facing extreme humiliation and getting over it and a few more.

It is unbelievable how the author can bring together so many issues; that too in 200 pages. For a new author, it is really an amazing job. Many authors fail to express one issue in the entire book but Chitra Anand has done that nicely. I won’t say she was very good at it but neither was she bad.

There were places when I felt disconnected. In fact, the first hundred pages were a pain to read for I needed words that would act like magnet to pull me away from my extremely busy schedule and flip those pages of Beyond School. But the second half of the book, the next hundred pages does act like a strong magnet.

You might not enjoy first half of the book that much but once you reach the second half, you would love Beyond School. Though the author does need to refine her way of expression for at places it becomes too confusing, yet the effort was really good and the book was a GOOD READ.

If I had to recommend this book, I would do it definitely. It is not the best book one would find but still, it is the one that deserves to be read.

This review is a part of The Readers Cosmos Book Review Programme. For details log on to thereaderscosmos.blogspot.com