The very first reason to pick this book up was to learn about the fascination and admiration and addiction that youth has for contemporary fiction. Durjoy Dutta being one of the big names (among youth) in India, I couldn't keep myself from buying his latest work.
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that such a run-of-the-mill book can be one of the bestsellers and has a decent rating on Goodreads.
How can I like, let alone love, a book if the story starts with the protagonist planning on to attempt suicide (for no apparent reason) and ends with, more or less, the same note. Like what? The only thing that kept me going throughout was the hope of being hit by an unexpected, spectacular climax. My rating very well reflects if I received what I had expected/ was hoping for.
The intent of the author was good, like I always feel, whenever I come across such work (that tries to touch onto serious issues - suicide, depression, harassment, religion, etc. but fails miserably in putting it out through good fiction). But fiction or novel-writing is much more than the writer's intentions. No offence to the depressed characters out in this fictional world, but such a lousy storyline along with cardboard characters fetched all but frequent sighs of pity from me.
I do develop a liking for a novel if it has a good story to offer; but the story of this novel! *sigh* Was there even one?
Being depressed is one thing; forcing the readers to take the flat characters as depressed is a totally different matter. Throughout the story, not once did I feel pity for Raghu (the protagonist) or Brahmi (Raghu's love interest). You cannot tell me about character's misery, show me. I read in one of the reviewer's review about the repeated PSs (you'd know if you've read the book) where he called Raghu keeping the track of tall buildings pathetic; I couldn't agree more; it just seemed too desperate an attempt by the author to make the readers believe that his protagonist is really "depressed."
It might seem easy to write about misery, depression and blue days, but it is as difficult a job. Even though the book isn't entirely based on this theme, core remains depression, so, if you really want to know what being in depression, what constantly having suicidal thoughts feels like, read "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath.
The imbalanced usage of details in the book is another pitfall. Places/ situations where there should have been explanations, were left unexplained; while the ones that didn't, were given the undeserved attention.
Let go of story for a second, boy the writing skills blew me apart! Mediocre is the word. Other than technical errors, dialogues were written so naively, it makes me question the credibility of the author.
As an ending note- a fiction too far-fetched is a bad fiction.
This didn't seem like his work- I'm saying this because I had read his "Till the last breath" months back and all I remember is I did find it pretty good. But again, just because I didn't like "The boy who loved", doesn't mean you won't too.
Thanks to my curiousity that I read this book. I won't say I regret my time reading it (for one, it did not take much) because going without reading it would have left me with a thought of depriving myself of a good read.