I read another book that had previously been lying around in a stall at the Delhi Book Fair. It’s called “The Story of a Widow” by Musharraf Ali Farooqi.
Set in Pakistan, but not too different from social scenarios in India, I can imagine this book being made into an interesting mini-series on some streaming platform – Netflix, Amazon Prime or whatever.
The main protagonist, Mona, recently widowed, is struggling to come out of her late husband’s shadow, and her life is thrown out of gear when a widower takes interest in her. Musharraf Ali Farooqi puts in quite some work in almost all his characters. So it’s easy to imagine all of them and their interactions.
However the book gets tedious halfway and becomes very predictable. In fact, to my disappointment, I imagined a more explosive end. That’s not to say the climax was a letdown, on the contrary, it almost redeems all the earlier plot flaws. Almost. However, this novel could have been chopped short by a 100 pages.