Dec 18, 2006 12:07 AM
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I had read a lot about Sidharth D. Sanghvi’s debut masterpiece but was yet to read the masterpiece. So this weekend, I decided to go for that and the ordinary weekend was catapulted by this book in exhilarating one. Thanks Sidharth.
The Last Song at The Dusk is a brilliant example of magical realism. Sanghvi who has worked as storyteller in past, indeed makes you realize what storytelling is all about. The narration seems to be a result of intercourse between prose and poetry, where prose just controlled enough of DNAs of the progeny that it looks like prose.
This magical story flows to you and you meet some people who are going to titillate you, tickle you and leave you gasping for your breath.
Its story of a divinely beautiful singer, when she sings everybody stops to listen. A doctor, who can fly kites so high that it’s no longer visible and can weave story which will mesmerized one and all. A girl who can walk on water and paint what you really are. A 14yrs old who knows how to please men and women and she devours weaverbird and poems of Yeats. A connoisseur of art, who loves to be in bathtub and her bedroom has no place (or should I say no use) for men. A house which does not like its inmates’ happiness. A Gora Sahib who died waiting for his lover, a brown man.
Young Sanghvi successfully exhibits the his mastery of characterization, (he ensures that every character is etched out in your memory), does his best to be erotic without crossing the limit of being smut or obscene. Though this novel cannot be said as novel which thrives on emotions, or rather I should say magical realism, erotica and the characters do not let you make you strongly feel the emotional undercurrent, which flows throughout this book.
