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A review by gabsi77
Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar
4.0
My reading habit has been off to a rocky start since 2020 hit. Not for any real reason, just that nothing much has caught and held my attention. I’ve been re-reading Anna Karenina for a while, and as much as I love the book, it’s not exactly the kind to make me forego all else in favour of reading, especially since I already know how it’s going to end.
So when a bookish friend (@gailrenatta in the bookstagram community) offered to loan me Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar it was a welcome break. I didn’t really know what to expect out of it, other than what the blurb gives away, but I generally love books set in India or with Indian characters (excluding Shantaram - that book was rubbish) and the fantastical premise was tantalising enough.
So after I picked up the book, I went to Ragamuffin, my favourite Saturday morning cafe (pre-covid-19 lockdown) and figured I’d spend an hour or so enjoying a chai latte and the book. Three hours later I was out of book and out of breath. You know that feeling at the end of a workout you hadn’t really planned on doing, energised but a little breathless? That’s how I felt. From the moment I started the book I was hooked, and devoured it along with my latte and brownie.
Night Theater is about a doctor, shunned from his medical career in the city, who now operates a clinic in a rural Indian community. It’s an exhausting, thankless, frustrating job where the medical resources are low and the sick and injured are high in number. Then one night, a family of three stops by and asks him to fix their wounds. Plot twist...turns out they’re actually dead. Well, not really a plot twist since we know from the blurb that they’re dead. Killed in a robbery, some benevolent being in the afterlife has agreed that they can have a second chance at life if this doctor can repair their injuries before dawn.
And so begins a sleepless night of operations and procedures in the hopes that he can bring this family back to life. I won’t tell you how the book ends, only that it’s totally worth reading all the way through.
So when a bookish friend (@gailrenatta in the bookstagram community) offered to loan me Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar it was a welcome break. I didn’t really know what to expect out of it, other than what the blurb gives away, but I generally love books set in India or with Indian characters (excluding Shantaram - that book was rubbish) and the fantastical premise was tantalising enough.
So after I picked up the book, I went to Ragamuffin, my favourite Saturday morning cafe (pre-covid-19 lockdown) and figured I’d spend an hour or so enjoying a chai latte and the book. Three hours later I was out of book and out of breath. You know that feeling at the end of a workout you hadn’t really planned on doing, energised but a little breathless? That’s how I felt. From the moment I started the book I was hooked, and devoured it along with my latte and brownie.
Night Theater is about a doctor, shunned from his medical career in the city, who now operates a clinic in a rural Indian community. It’s an exhausting, thankless, frustrating job where the medical resources are low and the sick and injured are high in number. Then one night, a family of three stops by and asks him to fix their wounds. Plot twist...turns out they’re actually dead. Well, not really a plot twist since we know from the blurb that they’re dead. Killed in a robbery, some benevolent being in the afterlife has agreed that they can have a second chance at life if this doctor can repair their injuries before dawn.
And so begins a sleepless night of operations and procedures in the hopes that he can bring this family back to life. I won’t tell you how the book ends, only that it’s totally worth reading all the way through.