When we are almost on the verge of seeing a horrible (almost) year off, it’s the time that we recollect some of the best gems that we read in these days of anxiety and offer the same to the readers who might enjoy. And doing so, we begin by offering our casual readers of Indian English fiction a light-humour penned by Mamta Kashyap, An Unusual Honeymoon. The novel has already been praised by the noted literary platforms in India and also by many readers on different book rating websites like Amazon and Goodreads. I also enjoyed reading it and I am sure that it will impress the readers with entertainment quotient, an area in which it can match the colours of typical Bollywood entertainers very easily.
An Unusual Honeymoon is about different helpless situations that life throws at us and we can merely be a mute spectator or take part in the game and become a professional player who can identify where the opportunities are. Mahashweta, the protagonist, as well as the narrator of this novel, is among the latter ones and she enjoys riding her fortune and even adversaries. She falls out of a plain of marriage that she barely boarded and lands into the soup of another that she barely knew anything about. However, she plays situations rather well and keeps encashing her chances. The novel is all about HER… Mahashweta’s ambitions, ideas, plans, vision and fate. A one-woman-show…
The novel might entertain the readers who don’t want to sit longer with the same title. One-evening readers, the bedroom readers or even one-holiday-one-book kind of readers who want something fast to begin, develop and even finish in the same breath. If you are one of those readers, Mamta Kashyap’s work will certainly keep you entertained and indulged for a single day. After that, you might either forget the fun or ask yourself some serious questions that the novel might introduce you to – why is marriage such a big event in the life of women? Why do women mostly have to compromise when it comes to choosing between ambition and their marriage? Why cannot a man (still) choose cooking as a respectable career choice in India? And a few others… in patches.
I have not gone into the technicalities of the fiction writing skills of the author. This recommendation is based on the storyline and the overview of the work. As it has been written in a first-person narrative, you might notice a certain tilt or bias towards the protagonist. Well, that is something which a reader can easily manage… isn’t that? If you match the profile of the fiction, you will certainly enjoy the show… all the best!
An opinion/recommendation piece by Madhav for The Book Blog
