Until i Find You By Kanchana Banerjee Book Review
Harsimran kaur ON May 11, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW, UNTIL I FIND YOU BY KANCHANA BANERJEE-FICTION
Rating: 4/5
Deceit—a playful mahogany of sharp minds in defiance to a reality characterized by one’s own proclivity to shape it as a self-exculpating illusion. Isn’t betrayal a depredation of an unpalatable intention of someonethat seems to crawl insidiously on you?
Kanchana Banerjee in her book ‘Until I Find You’ has used this irrepressible desire of ‘deceit’ to assemble each character in the jurisdiction of their furtive tendencies. A story is usually an agglomeration of love, sacrifice, truth, betrayal and a past. What if ‘perfidy’ insulates as a sole existent factor to bring all characters together?
Jenny has audaciously taken the task of finding the boy with ‘green eyes’ that she conspicuously captures in a magazine. Years back, she takes a sheltering carapsse in a cult to be away from the vituperative behaviour of her mother. Now, after ten years, with a disconcerted past left behind, she needs to find the boy. This ulterior motive leads her to the spiritless village of Bannod to pick the loose threads entangled in the tenebrous realm of an obscure past.
Virat, a short astute Police Officer in Bannod, is aghast to see a dilapidated leg cut off from the bend of the knee. Known by the sobriquet of ‘Chhota Virat’, the decomposed leg reminds him of Sejal, the effervescent girl he met just once. His mind takes him back to the sameprotuberant bunion at the edge of the toe and the flashy nail polish that raises a sense of familiarity when he sees the leg infested with worms.
Could it be Sejal? Is she dead? The questions lurk like a hoover to leave him not.
Manjeet has an aura of megalomania enabling him to arrest the gossips and loose talks that villagers are accustomed to. He leads an elaborate life with his son ‘Harsh’ in Bannod. He intersperses to be the ideal father and a kind of ‘all knowing’ personality that keeps the people of the village in awe of him.
The intention plays a pivotal role here of all the characters; a betrayal could be a violation of an integral system or the system itself is a denigration that it demands deceit. In any of the case, the persual to achieve the non-confirmatory is like a stormy leaf that will either wither away or carry on fluttering Obstrepously no matter how much dust is spooked on it. The characters in the book rely on their intentions to outstrip the defeatist mind that snuggles to keep away from the unanswered.
The book, ‘Until I Find You’ by Kanchana Banerjee is inspired from the ‘Peoples Temple’ mass suicide murder initiated by the ingenious Jim Jones. The cult ‘Happy Circle’ as formatted in the book sees a cul-de-sac after all its members are poisoned with a drink. After 10 years of the catastrophe, Jenny is the only member left but is clueless when she focuses on the ‘green eyed’ photograph of a boy who has a strike resemblance to her best friend Rubina whom she saw succumbing to death on the very fateful day.
As the story diverges to find the needle in the haystack, a paramount shift in assessing the plot grips the reader.
- Will Jenny open the real can of worms to bring the truth brushed under the carpet for the past ten years?
- The disinterring piece of leg convinces Virat to further investigate the matter. Will he be able to change the perception people have about him?
- What about the cult that disappeared in oblivion. Does it still have some traces left behind?
In the vast expanse of Rajasthan, in the humdrum village of Bannod lies a seed of deceit that would change the lives of Jenny, Virat, Manjeet and Harsh.
TAKE AWAY
An irresistible thriller that’s hard to put down.