Done with Her – Chirasree Bose – Review

Quick Tour – “It’s like slipping into a den of secrets without knowing a hoot of it. As a reader, Chirasree Bose takes you into the room of half-slept thoughts until you are finally Done with Her!”

Chirasree Bose’s debut novel, a crime mystery and a dark romance as she describes her work, Done With Her, is, in fact, a novella having very few pages. However, the novel is having many twists that would make a reader very engaged with the novel. The very first thing I liked about this novel is the narrative – it has an angle for every character, almost. It begins with Spreeha’s narrative as she is on the bed with her ‘husband’, making love. The narrative just flows – written in the first person per person, the readers get to know the details of events as the central protagonists in the particular chapters perceive. We have characters in limited numbers who form the ‘major’ bucket – Spreeha, Vrijen, Avesh, and Dheeraj. There are other characters as well who play the roles of subordinate ones.

After the narrative, the second thing that I love about this novella is its plot. Chirasree has worked wonderfully on the plot of her very debut piece of fiction. The story moves in a quite frenzy mode and we get to know ‘truths’ bit by bit, layer by layer. We, as the curious readers of the book, come to know of Chanda and her brutal ‘murder’ by a few characters in the novel. We are revealed about someone’s lust overpowering someone and a compromise just to take revenge on someone’s murder. In very few pages of this mysterious novella, the readers are given their proper due by the author.

Language is persuasive and compulsive. Because of the first person narrative, it feels like the chapter-protagonist is narrating just before the readers and the story becomes alive. A negative aura is spread throughout the novel and that’s the USP of this work by Chirasree Bose. She has worked quite well on her plot, narrative and also the momentum that she builds in her work.

I would recommend this work to the readers who want to read something quick but adventurous and happening unlike something bulky but loathsome and unmoving. The author has done pretty well and we can count on her words… Almost, being honest, I was taken aback by the rapidly shifting narrative in each of the chapters (22 in number). This was quite a deal!

About the drawbacks in this work, I will say not many. Yes, there are the moments you wish could be better otherwise. However, that’s the case with every next work we read. We like something and pass on a few. It can be clumsy for casual readers to get in sync with the narrative’s flow after reading the first few chapters. However, once they are connected to it, the book will become just amazing to read on and get to the depth of the secret and unfold the riddles to find out what lies beneath the shrouds of mysteries.

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review by Akhilesh