Friday 6 May 2016

'Hedon' - By Priyanka

‘Hedon’ – A teenage romance which is fresh, intoxicating and an interesting quick read.

A short review.

This is Priyanka’s debut work. Honestly, I am a little reluctant to go for things without any reviews with me beforehand. And with this reading style that I have, this time too, I was on a back-foot to pick ‘Hedon’. No doubt, the short description about the book was exciting. I went for it. And it was freshening. A little too dark and a little too quick, ‘Hedon’ is the book I have been longing for some months now. Priyanka, being the first-timer knows what she was going for. Her sense of a discreet maturity has peeped through every corner of this book. Even the book and the story-line revolves around college girls prominently, a fine essence of maturity that Priyanka has blended it cannot be sidelined. Her language is crisp, the usability of words to the point and even though the tone of this entire piece is pretty young, it the word arrangement does not seem cluttered. The book takes you straight to your college days. Days packed with gossip, crushes, dates, attraction, bisexual friends and what not! With these incidents of those golden days, it gets the by-products – funky clothes, touting accessories, hard pop music, sleep-over and best friends!

Hedon is about two individuals - Teenager Tara Mullick and Jay Dhillon who is 25. They meet at a social function and fall for each other. Their on and off the conversation is finely presented and divided into the phone-calls, text messages and emails. The partial teenage romance is fun to read. You flip the pages easily. Tara has her best souls with her all the time – Button and Cookie! The entire book is filled up with such pet-name references that we start with during our college days and continue throughout our life. Their relation in bits and pieces is charming. It conveys their temperament and is a connection that grows and hackles and sails over time and distance. The reason for distance – Jay being away from her and later on Tara who opts for higher education in the USA. The story is a narrative by Tara, her emotions for Jay, her college life in the USA and her heart in Calcutta. I’ll not disclose where their relationship progresses. It is when you read it end to end and you let into this book completely, it pinches you all along.

Priyanka has the substance with which she can pull off a dark fiction. There are references to the pop music throughout the book which may seem a bit overloading at times. I found it so because my knowledge and ears for pop music is limited to Michael Jackson and Madonna. With someone drowning in that genre of music, it can be more meaningful. The short snippets of poems across the book are artistic. Nor the prose or poems are crafted well along-side with so much of care that they don’t overshadow each other. I am awed. The details captured by Tara are perfect. They certainly allow the juice to flow through all 250+ odd pages. The author at every instance of this book sounds promising. Her command over the language can take her up to every genre I can think of right now.
And don’t miss a chance to admire the cover of the book. A jet black background with a strong punch of pink and purple!

I am personally waiting for more. All the best, Priyanka!
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                       - Vazir

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