Review : The Next Innings by Rama Ramani

The Next Innings 

by Rama Ramani

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

My Rating 4.5/5

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Synopsis

Rama Ramani's The Next Innings is a suspense fiction novel that employs the stream-of-consciousness technique at times. It interleaves time and life of a set of people, with various twists and turns. The primary plot is setup with Vishwanathan, a life coach, living in Chennai and a young couple, Jagan and Lakshmi, moving to San Francisco. What happens when their lives intersect forms the crux of the plot. 

Vishwanathan lives in Maaya's Presence with his humanoid assistant, Corlexa, and his dog, Future. There is a hidden room in the mid-flight landing which has a spiral stairway. Maaya's Presence is a state-of-the-art apartment complex circular in shape and built with glass.

Simple love stories can carry profound meanings too. Two Indians, Lakshmi, an educator, and Jagan, an IT engineer, bump into each other in a bus. Unknown to them, their lives are about to take on new, unexpected directions as they fall in love and move to San Francisco after marriage.

Cricket is fused into the storyline via the character of Sandhiya Rajalakshmi. Sandhiya achieves her dream and takes Indian Women's cricket to great heights and also leads a local Women's Premier League team, the Chennai Wolverines. She works together with Thala, who joins the team as a head coach as his next innings.

My Thoughts

The writing style of the author is pretty good so I was able to read it pretty fast and with ease. The beginning of the book was a little boring. I read around 25 pages and almost decided to give up on this book, thinking that I made a wrong choice. Then I thought of trying a few more pages and I am glad I did. The first twist in the story was there and that is when the story started picking up my interest.

The story is a bit slow at some parts, but that was okay. There were a lot of twists in the entire story so it feels mysterious. At the same time, it is not overcomplex, so you are not lost in events. Sometimes you feel like knowing what is about to happen and then there is a surprise. I like the way the characters of the story were built. Nothing too much to remember in one go, characters slowly build up which makes you understand them without going away from the main thread.

Rama Ramani's writing is also cinematic, in the best possible way. His novel doesn't read (as many suspence thrillers do) But what really makes The Next Innings such a gripping novel is Ramani's remarkable understanding of the limits of human knowledge, and the degree to which memory and imagination can become confused.

Even the most cleverly plotted suspense thriller don't work without compelling characters, but the people we meet in The Next Innings are drawn beautifully.

Highly Recommended to all the lovers of good suspense thriller.