1 out of 4 stars
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Jesse Coleman is a 22-year old man, living with his mother in Chicago. He doesn’t have any friends and suffers from depression. One day, while walking back home through a dirt-path, he is attacked by three guys. They beat him mercilessly, carve his back with a knife and then leave him there for dead. All of this because they wanted to teach him a lesson. All of this because he was gay. Somehow, Jesse survives this ordeal, with the word ‘***’ forever stamped on his back. Due to the lack of evidence, the offenders are allowed to walk free. Feeling like a failure and hoping for a fresh start, he decides to move away to another town, Lakewood. There he meets Jaden, who has suffered his fair share of troubles. Will Jesse be able to leave his horrific past behind? Will he be able to find a love that heals his wounds? Or will the past come back and haunt him for the rest of his life?
The main theme of Pride of Love by Kevin Dwyer is the tormenting lives lead by gay people. We are all aware of the disdain showed by the orthodox religious people towards the gay community. This book provides a glimpse into the life of a man whose life is on the verge of destruction because other people can’t accept him for who he is. It also highlights the issues of drug abuse and depression among people who are harassed daily, for being different. The brutality of hate crimes and the degrading effect it has on the life of a person, and the people around that person, is also emphasized. This book is full of all the things relevant in today’s world. It is supposed to raise awareness and to bring our attention to all the wrong things happening around us. It just doesn’t hit the right chords.
One of the things that this book miserably fails at is the writing style. From a personal point of view, I wanted to read this book because of its theme. It felt important to see the world through the eyes of a person who suffers from all this hatred. From a professional point of view, after having watched movies like Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight, the subject matter seemed exciting. Such stories tend to have potential and the romance, too, feels more authentic than the one lately, and commonly, publicised by other romance novels. I was disappointed, sorely and bitterly.
From all the books that I have ever read, this one had one of the most flawed writing structure ever. Right from the beginning, it felt so dull and robotic that I constantly kept questioning my choice of this book. It felt like I was reading a screenplay for a movie. The absence of the descriptive form of language left a gaping hole in the narrative. A novel is a form of literature, language is its essence. There was no essence in this novel. The sentences were mundane and constantly felt like a robot’s description of its surroundings. On the top of that, it was full of grammatical mistakes. The last fifty pages, especially, were jam-packed with errors.
While writing about such sensitive issues, the main focus lies on the connection between the characters and the reader. The depth required for this purpose was lacking in this book. All the heart wrenching things that the characters go through are supposed to shake us to the core. They are supposed to make us grieve alongside the characters when they suffer and make us happy when they finally find happiness. No such thing happens while reading Pride of Love. Now that I think about it, the writer had showcased all the worst scenarios that can happen to a person. But none of those things made my heart cringe.
There was no proper development of characters or their backgrounds. A character’s background is essential in understanding the mettle of that character. Understanding leads to attachment. I wasn’t attached to a single character in the whole book. All in all, I believe that every other flaw emerged due to the bad writing style. Hence, my rating for this novel is 1 out of 4 stars. I will admit that the story-line was good. The writing style messed it all up. With a proper language, it could have been a really good book. But it wasn’t. It had the right intention, but not the right implementation.
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Pride of Love
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