What are you reading these days, readers? Are you reading some ordinary romance that’s mostly the authors do these days? Are you reading some unconventional spiritual books like A Thousand Seeds of Joy? Or you are absolutely reading nothing and waiting to grab your next book? Hold on! We have got one for you – Elephants in the Room by Suraj Laxminarayanan. Before you say anything, this is a crime thriller novel and it will keep you entertained as well as subscribed for a prolonged period of time because it has 600 pages! Shocked? Yes, there are the authors who wish to write lengthy novels even today…

I came across this novel about 12-13 days ago and after reading so many reviews on Amazon and on reputed Indian book reviewers website, I decided to give it a go. In the beginning, I accept, I did not feel very much into it because it lacks pace. However, once you understand the pace and settle with the plot, believe me, Elephants in the Room has a tight grip over the reading aesthetics! The characters, the sequence of events, the psychosis, the deep narrative and many other things which build this novel are absolutely amazing! No, I am not flirting! I am telling what I felt as a reader.

It must have been said by many readers by now – the book is based on a bank robbery which goes bizarre as multiple ganges confront each other inside the bank somewhere in Chennai. That’s not only limited to it, however. It has different twists at times and it demands a patient reading. If you skip the pages, you will certainly miss the emotional episodes which occasionally come to pleasantly hount you…

On the narrative part, nevertheless, I will focus a little more. This is the part which draws my attention again and again. If the narrative is not built carefully, no novelist can protract a novel to 600 pages; do you agree? There must be something about it which can bind the events together and offer the readers everything in a single frame. Suraj Laxminarayanan, the novelist, has used the conversation a lot. The characters in the novel talk a lot – to others as well as to themselves. And this conversation will certainly be interesting for many readers. I enjoyed it.

There are many other things in the novel that will get the attention of many different readers. I will give big thumbs up to the characters as well as the narrative. Both just form asymmetry and make the novel interesting as well as deep. From my side, the novel is interesting and worthy enough to be read but it does need the readers to be patient with it; only then, and only then, a reader will able to get the inner meaning that Elephants in the Room has to offer. You can get a copy of this debut novel by Suraj by following the link to Amazon. Here you go:

Buy the book from Amazon – Click here

review by Ashutosh for Indian Book Lovers