Flaming Sun: Sundari Venkatraman (Indie Author): Book Review: CROSSED & KNOTTED

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Book Review: CROSSED & KNOTTED - Composite Novel by fourteen authors

Crossed &Knotted

India's First Composite Novel

My Review

The novel begins with a bang with Sutapa Basu’s first chapter. It makes the reader sit up and take notice. Hey, what the hell is happening? Something incredible indeed! Ayan Pal continues with the second chapter and he has already moved to the next generation. Press you hand against the dropping jaw. Yes, it continues with Shivi’s story – the girl who is fascinated with diaries. Are James and Joseph one and the same as James claims? You need to read the book to find out more. Chapter Three is about Shivi’s friend Siya and her boyfriend Siddharth. He leaves on a trip to the US and barely a few hours later a plane crashes. Siya’s petrified. Is Siddharth safe? This chapter has been penned by Sanchita Sen Das.

The story continues with the introduction of many characters as different authors write each chapter, weaving everything – crossing and knotting – into one long story. I always like reading Deepti Menon’s writing. The Dragon Lady is the chapter penned by Menon. Her characterisation of Kamu is simply amazing and so real - a dangerous woman to reckon with. The other authors who have continued the story are Arvind Passey, Mithun Mukherjee, Avanti Sopory, Bhaswar Mukherjee, Anupama Jain, Amrit Sinha, Monika Nair, Amar Lakshya Pawar, Bhuvaneshwari Shankar and Arpita Banerjee.

It makes the mind boggle when you think of fourteen people getting together to create a novel seamlessly. I must say it’s an achievement by itself. While the story appears to take off in many different directions, all the threads come together in the end to create one whole. A special kudos to Readomania for this one!

Having said all that, I do have one nit to pick. There were just too many characters, too many incidents; too many life spans, especially 2-3 generations handled together in the same chapter – I have a niggling thought that they have gone a bit overboard. It was kind of difficult to read the book. Like it’s too much at one go. Then again, if you read over a period of time, you tend to lose the thread.

The Blurb

Crossed & Knotted is India’s first Composite Novel, a book written by fourteen authors in close collaboration with each other. The chapters, each a story in itself, are knotted with one another through characters, events, settings and emotions. The result is a read that criss-crosses through a multitude of emotions bringing out deep rooted human desires. They narrate tales of love and betrayal, suspense and mystery, courage and dilemma, along with hope and resilience. Read it for a taste so tantalizing, that your mind will surely be craving for more!

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

Sutapa Basu is an Honours scholar from Santiniketan and holds a Masters degree in English Literature. Her professional career has seen her as a teacher, editor, and publisher. She has worked with renowned international publishing houses like Oxford University Press and Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the last five years of her professional career, she has launched 111 educational titles, 33 CDs and digital products, a language lab and a website. She has also developed and edited over 450 books over the last thirteen years.

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER : READOMANIA

India has traditionally been the land of storytellers and a lot of us have an inherent skill of creating good plots, stories and narrations. With a little encouragement and support, many more authors can be widely read. This is the essence of Readomania-an initiative that nurtures emerging stars of the literary world.

Readomania is an online content discovery platform that brings to life a whole new literary world, with stories, authors, books and a lot more. We also have a publishing house that takes the best of Readomania from the online format to print editions and launches debut authors. Our focus is to bring to the market, new authors and novel concepts, a composite novel being one of them. Our previous book, Chronicles of Urban Nomads, a collection of short stories, was also an experimental publication.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Readomania is the talent hunt in fiction that goes a step beyond, nurtures talent and showcases it to the world, in the process, creating a powerhouse of content.

Our website also has a lot in store for the reader. Since the content is edited and curated, by a strong team of editors, readers get quality reads on a platter. The variety on Readomania is impressively vast; we have romance, emotions, thrills, travel, humour and drama.

Accessing Readomania makes for a perfect break of fifteen minutes from your daily grind. The website was launched in January, 2014 and is already very popular with about 3500 registered users, of which 300 members are active contributors and authors. The site also boasts of 800 online publications and more than three lakh page views till date.

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