The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran (Book Review)!!!

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  I am done reading this 350-pages novel "The Hope Factory" by the authoress- Lavanya Sankaran. The book is being published by Tinder Press and has a very beautiful cover page. The greenish effect and a poor child splashing water over himself speaks a lot about what the story would be. It already reflects that it's a tale about India and its poverty in its main segment of people. 

          Lavanya Sankaran is the author of The Red Carpet, the bestselling, critically acclaimed debut collection selected for Poets and Writers magazine's Best First Fiction Award, Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers, and Borders Original Voices. The tile story was first published in the Atlantic Monthly. Her work has also been features in the Wall Street Journal, the Times of India and Outlook among other publications in America, India, Italy and France, as well as in numerous television appearances in a social and political commentator. Lavanya studied at Bryn Mawr College and lives in Bangalore with her husband and daughter.

           The synopsis of the book says:-

An international event: a remarkable first novel of modern India, weaving together a rich tapestry of social manners and mores, ambition, greed, and love, which will establish Lavanya Sankaran as one of the most gifted and original writers of fiction today.

Bangalore: where innocence, deceit and love collide

Anand is a Bangalore success story: successful, well-married, rich. At least, that's how he appears. But if his little factory is to grow, he needs land and money and, in the New India, neither of these is easy to find.

Kamala, Anand's family's maid, lives perilously close to the edge of disaster. She and her clever teenage son have almost nothing, and their small hopes for self-betterment depend on the contentment of Anand's wife: a woman to whom whims come easily.

But Kamala's son keeps bad company. Anand's marriage is in trouble. And the murky world where crime and land and politics meet is a dangerous place for a good man, particularly one on whom the wellbeing of so many depends.

         

   Lavanya Sankaran has a very good command over the language. After a long time I got to read a book by an Indian author written in a way that it seems as if its by an English author. He has given full justice to the story she has picked up. She has tried to express her views on the problems that a class of people in India suffers with. She has not tried to show an industrialist, entrepreneur or a working class person based in abroad and returning India to see how problems cover him from all the 4 sides. In fact, the story is kept quite realistic. 

             I loved the way both the stories goes simultaneously. Its about two families and I love how a same scenario is being showcased from both the point of views. It is quite visible that not only a servant is dealing with poverty and crisis but the situation of the boss is no less than that. I loved how every character is being built that we get attached with them. We know the characteristics of each of them. The dialogues are so deeply written that some of them made me remember some days of my struggle and pain. The second half of the book is amazingly written and every thing that this book should be complimented for is in its second half. 

             Coming to the drawbacks of the book, first is the slow pace and no suddenness in the plot initially. Secondly, I would say that according to an Indian audience, the cost of book- Rs. 550 is too highly kept. The similar names of the character becomes confusing at times- Anand and Anantmurthy. Also as there are many characters in the book, it's better to write them on a piece of paper and then read. In all, I would give this book 3.5/5. 

 Thanks.

 ABHILASH RUHELA - VEERU!!!