3 out of 4 stars
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Heartaches, as the name implies is a romantic tragedy beautifully written by H. M. Irwing. This hard core novel familiarizes you with the genuinely felt emotions all at once; pleasure, guilt, shame, agony, regret, desperation, trauma and revenge. The core characters in the story are Anna Walters-Simmon, Rafe Brown and the Prestons. The story begins with the description of Anna’s character and background on the occasion of her step father’s death. Later in the story, Anna Walters-Simmon gets deceived by her boyfriend, Matt Preston, whom she had once completely given herself to. The bubble of her dreams bursts when she finds herself being allegedly raped by the team of Prestons; Matt Preston (the boyfriend), Jason Preston (Matt’s brother) and Peter Preston (Matt’s father and English professor in the college she’s studying). Most surprising is the fact that she has been illegally duped to make the best use of the occasion when she was attending a party with her boyfriend and take her advantage. As the seemingly perfect fairy tale advances, the readers come to know of the technicality of the issues and a range of swaying themes discussed in the book. It is equally hard to digest that despite the immoral and heinous attempt of the Prestons at her modesty and self-respect she feels the ultimate and irresistible pleasure during the whole act. Upon realizing, she gets spiraled down into the vicious and dark circle of depression, guilt and shame.
Unfortunately, she is unable to find her way through the entire trauma to deal with her pent-up anger and bottled up emotions of frustration and extreme suffering. Lingering with her destructive thoughts she accidently meets a family friend named Rafe Brown, who is empathetic enough to urge her to speak to him about her trauma and everything that is bothering her. Not only this, but he also shares his pathetic and equally frustrating past with her and convinces her to set out on a journey together to seek justice and healing. The more she spends time with him, the better she comes to know him as a person which makes it easy for her to take decisions in the future. Rafe Brown is an ex-army personnel who has worked for several years in the Australian army. While being away with the troops in Syria, he had also been a grave victim of sexual assault by one of his peers named Eric. Together, he and Anna work to assimilate each other’s fears, regrets and agonies and prove to be the best companions for each other sharing intense mutual connection.
The book aims to highlight the stigmatized and rarely addressed traumatic social issues such as rape, illegal drug sales, illicit prostitute services, sexual assault, harassment, domestic violence and murder among others. This piece of fiction deals with a tremendously emotional stuff some bits of which might not be easily digestible for a common reader. There are occasional obscene and vulgar encounters in the beginning and towards the end of the story and the rest is hopefully smooth. So, this book clearly targets a limited audience; only those who have the grits for reading an unusual content which is quite hard on the nerves. On the other hand, It is indeed equally commendable that the writer has boldly written on such under-addressed topics, which is a kind of a feat not achieved by all of the writers as most of them tend to write about the mainstream themes and try to avoid any off-beat and unusual topics.
The story has a diverse and dynamic set of characters which adds to the twist and thrill of the novel and instil an element of realism into the whole story. As the reader goes along, many new and vibrant characters pop in; each with its own aura and uniqueness which further strengthens the plot with their contagious energy. The characters are seen to be truly absorbed into the storyline so as to demonstrate an inevitable cohesion. The storyline was sound but on the opposite, the plot was somehow predictable. The dialogue delivery was excellent and the language used was too sassy. The vocabulary used was of medium to high level and a strong indicator of the author’s writing abilities. To me, the vocabulary had a very strong appeal.
However, the start of the story bluntly failed to engage my interest to read the book and there were some loopholes pertaining to the character of Brian in the story. Brian (Anna’s step brother) was projected to be schematically involved in the deliberate duping by supplying drugs to the perpetrators and got lost somewhere in the middle as the story continued. In addition to that, the end of the story was so abrupt and fell a way too below my expectations and was observed to be incoherent without any justified, well thought out or well-crafted ending. The book contains a few typos and spacing errors as well but luckily, it does not interfere with the overall flow of reading. Some of these writing flaws resulted in slightly lowering the overall score of the book which failed to make an instant impact.
There are some of the lines I picked from the novel that enticed me the most “The downward spiral, once embarked on….that hovering on the edge. That urge to take a blind step forward and plummet to her demise”. “No one noticed her going. No one stopped her. Then she realized no one ever would. She could just keep going….and going”. “My greatest fear is that I would give in again. That they would simply touch me and I would cave in to their will. I don’t want that for me. I want you for me.” The well of depression Anna sank into is symbolized with a careful choice of words. The confusing train of her thoughts and the intense emotions of fear, frustration, diminishing hope, love, anguish, lust are beautifully depicted. Moreover, a sudden shift in emotions gives a realistic touch to the story which makes it an essential ingredient to engulf the attention of the readers and ornaments the manuscript as a whole.
As far as my opinion goes, I would rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. The book is a food for thought for the common people and the torch bearers of social justice and freedom. It sheds some light on the dark aspects of life and how these evils operate in disguise in the kind of society and world we live in today. However, Given to the sensitive content of the book, I would only recommend it to strong hearted and strong headed people as it might induce a ‘Carer fatigue’ into those already living through these tough conditions and mental challenges. Those who are yet to be familiarized with the real time pain and sorrow, this book will tell you all about what Heartaches are!
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Heartaches
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