Serious Men

It has been a long time since I have written. Probably because I did not have a good topic or maybe I just did not want to write. But today I have something to write and I thought I would share it.

Serious Men – people who are not regulars with The Hindu newspaper might be wondering as to what I am going to say about serious men. For introduction, Serious Men is a novel written by Manu Joseph. I always apprehend before buying a book because they have the ability to change the course of your thoughts. The many reasons behind why I chose this book include the Best Fiction award conferred by The Hindu, it being about serious men and been written by a fellow Malayali.

Among this, the second had more prominence in my mind. Now the question as to how “serious men” caught my interest.

The book is about two people in a research institute. One the boss, the other the clerk. The novel narrates a small period of time in their lives. The book talks about how the clerk tries to bring about a change in the monotony of life using his son as an instrument. He resorts to these in order to break the restrictions brought into his life because of his caste, he being a Dalit. His anger towards the Brahmins, who occupy most of the chairs in the research institute, is very pronounced and he derives pleasure in the fights between the Brahmins in his office.

The boss exemplifies the scientist terminology with an illustrious past and is on the way to a path breaking discovery. Through the boss, the author tries to annotate how a scientist thinks and delineates to certain extent the working culture of research institutes.

 How the boss goes about his discovery, the games played by the clerk and their reach and how the clerk keeps his date with his ideas to keep away from the monotony in his life forms the rest of the novel.

A major drawback of the novel is that during the middle the story’s pace dwindles, like the middle slog overs of one day cricket, though it picks up at the later stages

Writing a review about a book is more like telling a friend how you felt when you read the book. Or that is what I have tried to do in this post. I hope my readers have got a good picture in their mind before spending three fifty rupees on this hardcover.