Book reviews

Book review: The Sacrifice by Indrajit Garai

Book Cover

Title: The Sacrifice

Author: Indrajit Garai

Genre: Short Stories/Contemporary Fiction

Publisher: Indrajit Garai

Publication date: 25th August 2016

My rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Summary:

In this collection, meet:
Guillaume, who gives up everything to protect his child; young Mathew, who stakes his life to save his home; and François, who makes the biggest sacrifice to rescue his grandson.

My review:

This collection of short stories is an eyeopening and telling experience of human nature where complex topics such as strained relationships, heartache and financial hardships are explored from several points of view. The author narrates each character’s stance with eloquence and the storytelling factor creates an engaging and yet easy to follow plot. As with many short stories, the focus is clearly on the plot rather than character development, however I did not identify this as a shortcoming as each story provided an accurate glimpse into the main characters’ difficulties without weakening their traits.

I found that I could relate to certain characters and events more than others. The first two stories, The Move and The Listener, are a celebration of man’s relationship with nature and the need to preserve and protect our environment. Unfortunately I was not able to relate to Guillaume or Matthew and their demands to keep the farming industry and environmental regimes running and felt that the author could have expanded on both stories and explain their backstories in more detail.

The last story, The Sacrifice, is built up on the troublesome life that François leads and the sacrifices he makes for his grandson in the hope that he can build a bright future for himself when he is older. It was definitely the most emotional and engaging of the three stories and I was quickly turning the pages in an attempt to find out how it would end. The writing here was articulate and effortless, something that I believe was missing at times in its predecessors. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this collection of short stories and thoroughly enjoyed reflecting on the topics discussed.

Many thanks to Estelle for providing an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest review.

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