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A review by nashwa017
This Wide Night by Sarvat Hasin
1.0
Penguin publishers, you should have left this one in the drafts.
I don't know how a book got published without being edited and proofread. There are so many typos and missing words in this book, it's off putting and lazy. Was this book not worth your time?
Let's start with the writing style and the formatting choices. This book has a unique writing style where there are no quotation marks in a dialogue. This is a little confusing in the beginning but you can get used to it. However, the lack of quotation marks allows the random capitalisation of a sentence and that was very distracting.
This book is marketed as The Virgin Suicides meets Little Women in Pakistan. I think the only similarity there is the existence of the four sisters. That's pretty much it. The entire premise of this book is based around the idea these four sisters are "not like other girls" because they're mysterious and different. What makes them different, you ask? Well, one of them likes to read books all the time, in dinner parties and weddings, she's an aspiring author and there's another sister who likes to paint. I think the author tried so hard to make these women different but wasn't actually able to execute it. She just kept saying that they're different because they sometimes wear pants and cut their hair short.
Another main character in this book is Jamal, whose only personality trait is that he's obsessed with the girls, and turn by turn, falls in love with each of them. The author fed him some really cringy lines where he described his teacher Maria, one of the sisters, as "womanliness pouring into the classroom." He's also the most basic, stereotypical character you will ever meet in a book. He's lonely because his parents are dead, and he doesn't have any friends, he gets into gambling and drugs and is an annoying person to read about. He's also described as "exotic" because he's half French, but does his heritage come into play at any point in the book? Nope. Because, that was a tactic to make him interesting.
Essentially all the characters in this book are cardboard cut-outs and extremely flat. We are constantly being told that they're interesting but in truth, they're anything but that.
I thought the long hair of the sisters in this book would be really symbolic but other than it being present, it didn't have any symbolic value. With four sisters who are meant to be so different - the author really missed out on the opportunity to give us good social commentary.
You can also tell that the author used tragedy to move the plot along i.e. the suicide of that one random character which changed the trajectory of Jamal's life.
In some parts, you can tell the author didn't live through some parts of history. That's understandable, she's young but if you're going to write about the '71 war - do you research and make it more impactful.
Overall, I was expecting to be "wowed" by the creepiness and atmosphere of this novel. Instead, I found myself laughing at the twist which would bring the girls' mother back from the dead.
If only this book was as good as the last three paragraphs..
I don't know how a book got published without being edited and proofread. There are so many typos and missing words in this book, it's off putting and lazy. Was this book not worth your time?
Let's start with the writing style and the formatting choices. This book has a unique writing style where there are no quotation marks in a dialogue. This is a little confusing in the beginning but you can get used to it. However, the lack of quotation marks allows the random capitalisation of a sentence and that was very distracting.
This book is marketed as The Virgin Suicides meets Little Women in Pakistan. I think the only similarity there is the existence of the four sisters. That's pretty much it. The entire premise of this book is based around the idea these four sisters are "not like other girls" because they're mysterious and different. What makes them different, you ask? Well, one of them likes to read books all the time, in dinner parties and weddings, she's an aspiring author and there's another sister who likes to paint. I think the author tried so hard to make these women different but wasn't actually able to execute it. She just kept saying that they're different because they sometimes wear pants and cut their hair short.
Another main character in this book is Jamal, whose only personality trait is that he's obsessed with the girls, and turn by turn, falls in love with each of them. The author fed him some really cringy lines where he described his teacher Maria, one of the sisters, as "womanliness pouring into the classroom." He's also the most basic, stereotypical character you will ever meet in a book. He's lonely because his parents are dead, and he doesn't have any friends, he gets into gambling and drugs and is an annoying person to read about. He's also described as "exotic" because he's half French, but does his heritage come into play at any point in the book? Nope. Because, that was a tactic to make him interesting.
Essentially all the characters in this book are cardboard cut-outs and extremely flat. We are constantly being told that they're interesting but in truth, they're anything but that.
I thought the long hair of the sisters in this book would be really symbolic but other than it being present, it didn't have any symbolic value. With four sisters who are meant to be so different - the author really missed out on the opportunity to give us good social commentary.
You can also tell that the author used tragedy to move the plot along i.e. the suicide of that one random character which changed the trajectory of Jamal's life.
In some parts, you can tell the author didn't live through some parts of history. That's understandable, she's young but if you're going to write about the '71 war - do you research and make it more impactful.
Overall, I was expecting to be "wowed" by the creepiness and atmosphere of this novel. Instead, I found myself laughing at the twist which would bring the girls' mother back from the dead.
If only this book was as good as the last three paragraphs..