Book Review: An Eternal Romantic

31 October, 2012

An Eternal Romantic is a novel about a girl turning a woman - Indira, who is maddened by the delusion of a love of the forever kind. An impossible muse keeps her hanging onto the hope that Love and Romance are blood-borne diseases that one must live with, all their lives.

TRY AS she might, she cannot shake off the hold her delusional lover has over her. In the process, she has a couple or more affairs until she ends the last one - leaving it hanging in suspended belief. In effect, she turns to serious poetry, and wishes to give off herself selflessly in her profession as a medical doctor.

The author, Dr. Sreelatha Chakravarty, brings to life a character, which is interesting enough to fill an entire book but is unique enough to baffle a practical reader. The author tries to paint a picture of romanticism as some kind of infirmity that makes many a person live in make-believe. When such make-believe is questioned or negated by the practicalities of life, some souls like Indira in the story, cling onto delusions to ward off hopelessness.

An eternal romantic is poetry of life—a slice of life that in very few words tries to encapsulate the vast subject of romance from the character’s perspective. And when the story ends you hope it had just begun. That is why the author is planning on writing a sequel to it. An Eternal Romantic is, for the author, is a study on schizophrenia as it manifests in the form of romantic aspirations and beliefs.