A story of a boy who contemplates suicide. A story of a boy who loved with a backdrop of Indian middleclass consumed with their fanatism for their religion and Hindu-Muslim issue. A story that’s gloomy enough to linger in your thoughts for long. A story that’s thoughtful, beautiful and painful. That’s The Boy Who Love by Durjoy Datta.
About The Boy Who Loved
Raghu is a boy deep-stricken with the grief or rather the guilt for letting his best friend die. He contemplates suicide and he’s just counting the days. But then, he falls in love. He finds hope again. Or is it despair in disguise? Is he really going to do it? Does he do it in the end? You’ll find out in the book The Boy Who Loved.
My Review For The Boy Who Loved
It’s incredibly good. Picking up the book expecting a rather fluffy romance with lots of ‘masala’ rather than some serious subject, I was taken in by a pleasant surprise.
The book is written in the form of diary entries by Raghu, who lives in a normal middle-class Bengali Hindu family. He grows up trying to compete with his brother and the competitive streak makes him one of the brightest students in his class. But his deep secrets and tragedies of his life have something else on the cards for him.
The Boy Who Loved is less of ‘just a romance’ but more of an Indian family drama that addresses very real and painful truth of the modern life. Even though the book is set in 1999-2000, it’s seems much closer to the present day world.
All the good elements of a book meant to touch your heart, make you think and ignite a series of emotions in you are there in this book. I wouldn’t say the words hit a bulls eye every time but they do it enough times to make you appreciate your choice of picking up this book. In the end, it makes your heart heavy with gloom by the time you finish it. You want to take some time to put together your thoughts about the book and then, you want to tell the world about it. Probably, that’s why I am writing this review (or maybe that’s what I do every time I finish a good book).
The book has so much to say about the current state of Indians and the gap that is among the people due to their religion. The book has so much to say about how depression is really like and how serious something like suicide is. The book shows you the evils hidden behind the veils of religion, culture and relationships. The book gives you something to ponder over in the end apart from entertaining you and keeping you gripped to it right from diary entry one.
It’s an absolutely amazing story that you must read. Go ahead and read The Boy Who Loved.
My Ratings
4.5/5 Stars
Now I’m eagerly waiting for the review of the boy with a broken heart. And I think… No No No I’m not taking anything about it now 😛
P.s. I have taken an oath that I’ll comment on your blog as well 😉
[…] part to this duology (not really) after The Boy Who Loved, Durjoy Datta has brought to you the same canny, sarcastic, thoughtful and suicidal character […]