The Tonic by Mayur Sarfare
The Tonic
by Mayur Sarfare
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
My Rating 4.5/5
Synopsis
"Set in the year 1992, The Tonic is an emotionally wrenching tale of an unlikely friendship between Masher and Raem, two young outcasts with psychological deficiencies. We see through their eyes what the riots do to them and the people of Bombay, which mysteriously connects decades later to the life of a media tycoon cum atheist, who has genocidal plans for the religious!
Mumbai, 2017: Reymerg D’Souza, a media tycoon and powerful militant Atheist, harbours an ominous plan to cleanse the country from religion.
Avantika Das, an investigative journalist, partners with a suspended cop to embark on a perilous journey to expose Reymerg’s darker agendas.
Back in 1992, two young misfits are drawn together by the ravages of an approaching Hindu-Muslim riot.
Masher, a diffident teenager with a speech disorder is forced into participating in an annual elocution contest held in his school.
During this period, he befriends Raem, a twenty-one-year old recluse with a foreign descent, who gifts him a packet of mysterious chocolate pills.
The pills magically begin to embolden their lives. They begin to win moments and people. A Tonic that turns them from being misfits to stupefiers.
But soon the riots begin to take its violent form. As it takes away everything from one but not so much from the other.
The two tales separated by decades, strangely begin to converge towards the end, to forge a deadly truth that binds the lives of these people in the most unexpected manner and may be the key to stopping the atheist from executing his sinister plans."
Mumbai, 2017: Reymerg D’Souza, a media tycoon and powerful militant Atheist, harbours an ominous plan to cleanse the country from religion.
Avantika Das, an investigative journalist, partners with a suspended cop to embark on a perilous journey to expose Reymerg’s darker agendas.
Back in 1992, two young misfits are drawn together by the ravages of an approaching Hindu-Muslim riot.
Masher, a diffident teenager with a speech disorder is forced into participating in an annual elocution contest held in his school.
During this period, he befriends Raem, a twenty-one-year old recluse with a foreign descent, who gifts him a packet of mysterious chocolate pills.
The pills magically begin to embolden their lives. They begin to win moments and people. A Tonic that turns them from being misfits to stupefiers.
But soon the riots begin to take its violent form. As it takes away everything from one but not so much from the other.
The two tales separated by decades, strangely begin to converge towards the end, to forge a deadly truth that binds the lives of these people in the most unexpected manner and may be the key to stopping the atheist from executing his sinister plans."
My Thoughts
The Tonic by Mayur Sarfare This is no ordinary ‘crime’ novel, if indeed that label fits the mark; instead we delve deep into the mysteries of the human mind. Over the last decade, American bookshelves have become open to more work in translation, creating an influx of award-winning and spotlight-stealing writers from Roberto Bolaño to Per Petterson to Muriel Barbery.
A strange but predictable side effect of more overseas work is that authors are often labeled as the “next” version of the most prominent author from their homeland. Latin-American authors have had to deal with this for years, and now Scandinavian authors have assumed the yoke of Stieg Larsson. So it’s a credit to the originality of Mayur that his novel comes unadorned with any mantles to assume.
The criminal characters in the story are also interesting in the sense that they are very philosophical in the remarks they make. The plot is very straightforward and by no means something new; however the author has used it cleverly and reveals a lot about characters personality. Overall, a great and worthy addition to any crime thriller fiction fan’s bookshelf.
Highly Recommended!
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