The Purgatory of Half Forgotten Riddles- Book Review
The story begins with a note of mundaneness and generality of life, the protagonist (Peter) starts with how he won’t regret anything except for Alice.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
At the beginning of the book, the Author describes Alice to be a grey character. The imagery used to describe the melancholy is very beautifully done. The protagonist brings it from his blurred memory, and goes back to the time, around four decades ago.
His memories with Alice come alive. I won’t go into the details otherwise it would be a spoiler.
But I love the fact, the author has been as descriptive as possible weaving the fragments of his memories right from his childhood. What I have to say is, it is definitely a very well written book. It had certain complexities while building up the characters, which made the storyline more interesting and intriguing to read. The author’s observation skills are amazing and it has been written in very good language.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I love the first half of this book where the author talks about his childhood memories and the concept of family, where he had lost his mother and grown distant from his father. The feelings of the author are very real and I love this portrayal. I love the thoughts he might have gone through while writing the childhood memories in such a pure and descriptive way.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Being a debut author, John A. Raju has done an amazing job creating a literary fiction that is quite relatable and the characters have depth even when they are written in the form of a journal.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Reading this book was indeed like a gust of fresh air, I would definitely recommend it to book lovers. The last thing I would want to say about this book is it is surely unputdownable.
About the author: John A. Raju is an engineer by qualification, a business analyst by profession, and an author by passion. His love for books was stoked initially by a diet of Jeffrey Archer and Dan Brown novels. Milan Kundera, Khaled Hosseini, Douglas Adams, and Arthur C. Clarke are some of his several other favorite authors. He completed his debut work The Purgatory of Half-Forgotten Riddles during a four-month break taken after his first job. It was published in 2020. You can reach him here.
