Book Review: Tale O'12 by Biranchi N Acharya

Title: Tale O’12

Author: Biranchi N Acharya

Pages: 220

Publisher: BecomeShakespeare.com & Blogadda.com

Genre: Fiction

Getting the book:

What intrigued me about this book was the fact that it has been put together by a blogger. Various real life episodes – 12 in this case- are put together in a fictional manner. I believe, at some point, these stories were all blog posts in some form on the author’s blog and were put together coercively in the form of a book and published. Reading the book didn’t take very long- I think it was about 4-5 hours collectively over two days. I do wonder why the book is titled 'Tale O'12'- is it simply because there are 12 tales? Also, initially I thought there would be a co-relation between each story that results in a bigger overall story, but that is not the case and each story stands independently.

The Story & Style:

The book tells 12 different stories. Each one is a different experience from the author’s life. Simple life events, chance encounters, unexpected conversations are what make the bulk of Tale O’12. The book’s summary rightly mentions, ‘Every moment of our life is part of a story happening’.

What I loved about these stories was how conversations took the narrative forward. Be it in a car driving through a maoist infested region, in a train compartment, in a police station or at the author’s home, every story has a different setting that the narrator finds himself in usually during his travels. At each point, there is a unique set of characters that interact with the narrator. There are serious discussions about religion, dharma and democracy on one side and then on the other there are fun conversations about a blood-sucking boss and price of dal and onion.

The best part of the conversation approach is that they do not make the narration boring. And so, although there is definite knowledge being imparted on various topics through the stories, you never want to put the book down.

The author is definitely a learned person and always on the path of righteousness, as is evident from his narration.

On a personal note, since I belong to Odisha, I liked the fact that the narrator is based in Cuttack and there are a few references to places around the city. There is a lack of written material in and about the Eastern Indian state and so I appreciate every effort of people writing about it.

Conclusion:

Go for Tale O’12 for its simplicity and relatable life situations, for all those conversations you tend to have with random people who may or may not leave an impact on you, for knowledge on topics that we usually tend to ignore or not care about, and most of all, for a light reading over the weekend. The book is easy to read, and is for everyone.

If there is one thing I absolutely hate while reading a book, it is finding grammatical errors in the text. Sadly, this book has a lot of them especially in the first and last stories. It was a dampener for me and I didn’t want to continue reading. I hope the complete text goes through proper editing before the next batch of printing.

My rating: 3.5/5

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