Story & Style: A Review of ‘The Face at the Window’
On ReadWriteInspire by Archana Sarat
Kiran Manral weaves a web of intrigue, conjures up an atmosphere of dread and brings to life characters who will haunt us long after we read the last page.
by Archana Sarat
February 10, 2018
in Reviews
One of the most prolific writers in India, Kiran Manral moves between genres and stories smoothly and seamlessly just like the ghost of the Windermere cottage in her book, ‘The Face at the Window’. Not many Indian authors write horror, and this is what intrigued me to pick up this one. A few pages into the story, I realized this wasn’t another one of those cliché horrors that make one roll their eyes and yawn from boredom. Kiran Manral weaves a web of intrigue, conjures up an atmosphere of dread and brings to life characters who will haunt us long after we read the last page.
After reading 100+ books every year for the last few years, I have realized that what I look for in every novel that I read is a good story. Don’t get me wrong—I love language; it is what I breathe, caress, memorize, underline and write down in my journal, but it all vaporizes in the absence of a good story. Opinions differ, and I know many readers who can sacrifice the pleasure of a good story just to be enchanted in the arms of beautiful prose. That’s not me! However, if you give me a book that has a unique plot narrated by a master storyteller in the most delightful language, you turn me into a fan of the author. That’s exactly what I found in ‘The Face at the Window’—a grasping tale told in stunning prose.
‘Memories are the kind of elusiveness that shift, change form, and remodel themselves by the second.’
‘Smiley face icons cannot hope to replace words thought out carefully in order to put a smile on the other person’s face, the sharpness or the laxity of the handwriting telling stories about the frame of mind of the writer, the smudges on the sheets of paper telling their own stories, blotches where tears might have fallen, hastily scratched out words where another would have been more appropriate, stories that the writer of the letter might not have intended to communicate.’
Read the rest of the review here.
