Book Review: 'The Withering Banyan' by Hyma Goparaju

When was the last time you held a serious work of literature in your hand. this question may be odd at times because the trending culture today is pulp fiction, and sadly umpteen youth are swayed towards it. Nevertheless thanks be to God that people like Hyma Goparaju still continue to deliver explicit and professionally nurtured work of fiction. More so literature at its best.

The absolute strength of this book holds in the manner that the author has convincingly been able to describe different situations. The description creates a vast imagery and puts you into a different world altogether. Although at times you notice that it would not be necessary to have it. The author shows her talent at such descriptions by utilizing as many adverbs possible sometimes to mean the same, but all words do not mean the same you see, every single word has a different story to narrate.

The authors language ought to be admired I wish I would have worked my first book under the guidance of such an abled personality. The book transports you to the suffering undergone by Schizophrenics and more so the story is built in a family situation making it more dear to Indians. After all it is a modern Indian English fiction. At last I was blessed with truly a wonderful treat except for a few repetitions I think I didn’t get bored reading this novel.

Bottomline: This book is for a literature lover and certainly for the one who wants to know the symbolism of The Withering Banyan Tree.

Blurb A well-to-do business family, whose members are torn apart by a turbulent father-son relationship shrouded in mistrust, suspicion, and contempt for one another – a result of the vagaries of the son’s mind and its maladies suffers silently. Well-wishers fear that Badri is suffering from a mental derangement and is on the brink of wiping away his father, Siveswara’s hard-earned fame and fortune. Unaware of the boundless periphery of its affliction, descendants of the five-generation lineage are confounded with an enigmatic and stigmatizing battle of their lifetime which they have to decode and overcome in order to ensure the well-being of the ensuing generations.