3/3: A Trio-Ship | Mahidharnath Sesetti | Book Review

PLOT: 2/5
CHARACTERS: 2/5
WRITING STYLE: 1.5/5
CLIMAX: 2/5
ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 2/5

Three friends meet at an admission procedure of a college. Narendra, Bhadri and Indira soon become a set of very good friends.

The story of 3/3: A Trio-Ship follows through about how they get to know each other. This is intertwined with the ways and rules of the hostel they are residing in, some of which they learn the hard way. It is mainly about their struggles at college with exam pressure as a central theme.

Their interactions with the senior students are given a lot of room. Most of these are conflicts. The issue of primary importance is their academic schedules and their growth as individuals.

To add to these are some of the skirmishes with their peers or teachers that adds to the excitement of the plot. Other themes include striving for a stable job, aspiring for a government job, job security and gender bias and discrimination at the workplace.

3/3: A Trio-Ship ends on a shocking note that takes a complete U-turn as disastrous mishaps take place. It comes with the moral that trying to speak one’s mind comes at a cost and at times one has to pay a heavy price.

However, it is through courageous endeavours that change can be brought. 3/3: A Trio-Ship is, then, more about how three friends pursue their individual freedoms and cover up for each other while trying to remain focused on their goals.

Nevertheless, the first thing that puts one off about the book is its spelling errors. All of the sentences lack the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’.

The language is rather basic so the reader has to put quite some effort to understand the sentences. There are typological errors and the colloquialisms used makes the language rudimentary, simple and unsophisticated.

A lot of effort is put into description but sadly, a lot of the description is unwanted. The real story only begins midway through chapter 2. Until then there is a lot of rambling that tries to set the background and tone of the novel but with little success.

The pace is rather slow as the story unfolds at an uneven pace. Then again, at times it moves drastically into unfathomable horizons. It treads the barriers between cadence and expressiveness rather roughly.

There is very little focus on characterisation. Except for the names of the characters, the readers know little about how they look or how they appear. The main focus is on the incidents and events that are rather haphazard and poorly constructed in the first half of the book.

From chapter 4 onwards, both the language and the descriptions start to get better. There is an improvement in the manner of organisation of the text. The paragraphs sort of flow into one another with relative ease as the thought seems more organised.

But for the most part, the story goes on and on about everyday happenings in their academic as well as non-academic schedules. The pace slackens as the narrative gets rather tedious and monotonous.

Though it may seem to be an eventful plot, there is a lot of repetition and unnecessary circumlocution. It takes a long time to understand the real plot line and by then the reader may lose all interest.

However, it is not just a simple college story but has the potential to be better constructed provided it meets with some serious editorial concern.

Can’t wait to read it? Buy your copy of 3/3: A Trio-Ship using the link below.