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A review by levendir1021
देबदास Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
3.0
Actual rating: 3.25/5
"I know that love is one thing, and lust or the fascination of beauty, quite another, but they are often mistaken for the same thing."
Devdas is a story about love, unrequited love. And a man who is the orchestrator of his own misery.
Honestly, I didn't enjoy the start of this book at all. Devdas is mean and unlikely and I could not understand why Parvati likes him as much as she does. Someone else has suggested Stockholm syndrome and I would say that that isn't all to unrealistic.
I'm glad I pushed through though because in a way he gets what he deserves and so does she and I actually really ended up enjoying the ending.
Sadly this book is lacking all the brilliance of an actual Bollywood film. And I don't mean that we can't physically see it but that also the description gives nothing of the sort. The fact that it's a novella doesn't help in this regard as it's solely focused on the love story with very little around it, leaving a lot of room for interpretation. At many times is felt as if it was just the backbone of an amazing story that someone should eventually work around and bring it to life (and maybe that is what the films do) but it feels very rushed here. I constantly felt that I wanted more character depth and slower story progression which is why I'd say that this book suffers from serious pacing issues, especially at the start, it does get better as it goes on.
All that criticism aside, I felt that it was a lovely little story after we got over the protagonist's childhood and there were many moments that struck me as very realistic yet sometimes sad. And I was strangely satisfied (for lack of a better word) with how it all ended.
One little comment on the side, the eBook version has quite a few formating errors and I even spotted a grammar error or two, hence I would recommend reading a physical copy instead (in any case, avoid the translation by Devjani Huggins).
While I wasn't completely blown away by this story, it has certainly intrigued me to look more into Bengali literature.
"I know that love is one thing, and lust or the fascination of beauty, quite another, but they are often mistaken for the same thing."
Devdas is a story about love, unrequited love. And a man who is the orchestrator of his own misery.
Honestly, I didn't enjoy the start of this book at all. Devdas is mean and unlikely and I could not understand why Parvati likes him as much as she does. Someone else has suggested Stockholm syndrome and I would say that that isn't all to unrealistic.
I'm glad I pushed through though because in a way he gets what he deserves and so does she and I actually really ended up enjoying the ending.
Sadly this book is lacking all the brilliance of an actual Bollywood film. And I don't mean that we can't physically see it but that also the description gives nothing of the sort. The fact that it's a novella doesn't help in this regard as it's solely focused on the love story with very little around it, leaving a lot of room for interpretation. At many times is felt as if it was just the backbone of an amazing story that someone should eventually work around and bring it to life (and maybe that is what the films do) but it feels very rushed here. I constantly felt that I wanted more character depth and slower story progression which is why I'd say that this book suffers from serious pacing issues, especially at the start, it does get better as it goes on.
All that criticism aside, I felt that it was a lovely little story after we got over the protagonist's childhood and there were many moments that struck me as very realistic yet sometimes sad. And I was strangely satisfied (for lack of a better word) with how it all ended.
One little comment on the side, the eBook version has quite a few formating errors and I even spotted a grammar error or two, hence I would recommend reading a physical copy instead (in any case, avoid the translation by Devjani Huggins).
While I wasn't completely blown away by this story, it has certainly intrigued me to look more into Bengali literature.