Book Review by K.S.Loganathan
Sam Martin is a British author and screenwriter with three full-length award-winning novels and two full-length feature film credits. His latest book ‘Bitterblue’ is a “multi-plot / multi-narrative cross-genre novel” set in present-day England and its main characters are in a moral maze. The discerning reader asks himself, what would I do in a similar situation?
‘Bitterblue’ is not a word found in a standard dictionary, but you can guess that it’s not a happy place, and that it has a lot of negative emotions like anger, sadness, and worry associated with it. Early on, the author introduces it as a 3-square meter canvas painting created by an Italian abstract artist Gianna Camporese, which is on display at a London museum. It is titled ‘ Bitterblue: the art of forgiving and forgetting.’ The painting shows thick and thin blue and purple lines crisscrossing over a deep blue background. In essence, it is a chance to change.#The story follows three pairs of commonplace characters who are linked by love or marriage, an assortment of bad guys hot on their tail for reasons to do with their present or past actions, and a televangelist with a cult following. It is an existential novel detailing the forward-looking and backward-looking crises arising from their actions. It deals with the themes of love and identity. The characters are there in the story, each having a definite past and an indefinite future, a la Heidegger’s “Dasein”, just being there.
The plots involve an art heist, burglary, drugs, infidelity, seduction, and blackmail – all dealt with in finesse- and the stories are interwoven into a common theme. However, the narrative style adopted is a mixed first-person omniscient standpoint and a third-person account; while it aids tension-building and theme delineation, it confuses the reader as various points of view come into play, and it dawns on the reader that the narrator could not have witnessed the events described, which stretches the limits of credulity. So, overall it doesn’t allow the reader time to identify with a favourite character and fear for their safety.
The author’s descriptive style and philosophical insights are good. Towards the end, one of the characters suggests not writing an ending at all to a story- it keeps the reader curious forever and hopeful of a happy ending, she argues. I should have taken the advice and stopped reading the book at page 340. I hope that Sam Martin, as he adds finishing touches to the film script, heeds the advice of his creation Harold Hiller to “take the audience on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and give them a ride for their hard – earned ticket money. Then, at the end, you give them a payoff they want, but in a way that they would never expect”.I thought it would make a good Bollywood masala thriller, but the comedy, music, and retribution-at-the -end elements are missing . But there is enough to keep the reader interested for the most part.
Postscript from Aishwariya – Thanks, Sam, for sending the book all the way from Germany! It took the respective postal services 16 days for it to reach us 😀
