Night Theater

This was so compelling and weird and morbidly fascinating. It captures a single night in rural India when a family (pregnant mom, dad, and son) appears at the doors of the local rundown clinic and tells the doctor that they were murdered last night and that their only chance to live again is if the doctor can successfully fix their wounds overnight.

This is one of those books that makes me wish I had gotten an English degree so I could talk a little more intelligently about it. Like what is it when a plot is structured as a framework to explore philosophical ideas- life, death, human connection, corruption, etc.? Would it be an allegory? I think that implies more of an aspect of overt moralizing than this book goes in for, though; even though it's an excellent playground for some really interesting ideas, it isn't emotionally manipulative or trite. It could easily have gone Scrooge and the three Christmas ghosts, culminating in some convenient life lesson, but thankfully it doesn't.

The story's overall lack of sentimentality is one of the main reasons it worked so well for me. There are some really great moments where the narrative acknowledges the places where it could easily fall into the expectations for this type of story and purposefully doesn't: 

The teacher's story was like a bizarre fable- something a priest might deliver in a religious ceremony. But there were no flowers here, no lamps or burning inherence to make the unreality more palatable.

Or

It was tempting to adopt the pharmacist's way of thinking about the world and everything in it. Whatever would happen would happen, she'd said... Or something similar, some aphorism of endless absolving circularity.

I also liked exploring a lot of the themes here- the concrete consequences off bureaucratic corruption, how people treat you versus how you percieve yourself, how you act when you are completely out of your depth and your yardstick for what's right and wrong has been utterly demolished. 

A lot of this was represented well in the contrast between how the older, disillusioned doctor reacts to the situation versus how his young, religious pharmacist experiences it. And even though this feels fable-like in that the characters are all unnamed (the pharmacist, the teacher, etc.), I thought the characterizations were quite well done; they always felt like real people rather than cardboard metaphors.

The last thing I have to mention is how I loved the way it leans into the bizarre grossness of it all. The descriptions of the surgeries kept me absolutely glued to the page!

Overall just great ideas, great story, great characterizations, delightfully weird, couldn't put it down!

With a story that feels like The Good Place meets Paulo Coehlo (minus the comedy), this book is enchanting from start to finish. The prose has an allegorical bite, and it reads in a way that hooks into you and doesn't let you go. I haven't stopped thinking about the story since I finished it, and honestly I find myself continually trying to work out all the messages hidden within this macabre story.

I found Paralkar's story to be intricately well crafted. The fact that the bulk of the story takes place over the course of a single night means there's never time for the reader to get bored. At the same time, it doesn't feel like too much has been packed into that time frame, either. The pacing carries you along with ease.

The characters, too, are written with compassion. The surgeon is aging and irascible, but we see enough of him that we appreciate who he is. The pharmacist is warm and caring, her husband loyal and trusting. The family – a teacher, his wife, and their young son – all have distinct personalities and flaws. And this is going to sound bizarre, but I was so immersed in the story, in these characters, that I didn't realize that none of them had names until after I'd finished the book.

But perhaps the most marvelous thing about Night Theater was that it was never exactly as I expected it to be. It took turns I would never anticipate, little twists and turns that sometimes took my breath away, and the ending is the kind of ending that leaves you thinking about its implications long after you've finished reading.

In the end, this is a story with a breathtaking scope. It's a story about what life takes away from you and what it gives back, about sacrifice, compromise, intrinsic value, and picking your battles. It's about hope or the lack thereof, about optimism or pessimism, and about so many other things I'm still dissecting.Poetic without being overly prose-y, I finished this book with the ultimate sense of having read something beautiful.

I really enjoyed this weird, surreal, allegorical novel. It made me think about the ethics of medical treatment, the corruption of the health care industry, and the nature of love, family, career, and faith. I don't want to give spoilers, because so much of the unsettling plot turns on the gothic details of this small-town surgeon's ethical dilemma. I felt myself pulled along by Paralkar's disconcerting slow revelation of exactly what is going on in this book. And, for a book which basically freaked me out the majority of the time, I found the culmination/revelation in literally the final paragraph to be a bright and beautiful gesture.

Highly recommended, 

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Night Theater is one of those reads that won't let you go. It leaves you with far more questions coming out than you had going in, and that is one of it's real strengths. Nothing in this story is simple, despite how straightforward the narrative feels.

The premise is relatively straightforward, if fantastic. A cynical physician in a rural clinic in India is confronted with three dead people who claim they will be able to live again if he repairs their wounds before the sun rises. From that point, thins spin out with increasing complexity.

I don't want to say too much about this title for fear of interfering with the process of reading it—but I do strongly recommend that readers grab the opportunity to live through that night with the physician at the story's center.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley. The opinions are my own.

THE NIGHT THEATER by Vikram Paralkar is an excellent novel about an Indian surgeon who, one night, is visited by a family of three who claim to be dead and have come back from the afterlife. The surgeon works in a clinicthat is underfunded, understaffed and underpaid in a small town. The surgeon uses a combination of a cruel exterior and resourcefulness to do what he can for the people of this town. 

One night, the surgeon is visited by a family, comprised of the father (the teacher), the wife (who is very pregnant) and their eight-year-old son. The family were victims of a random robbery and murder while they were on their way home from a fair. Each have very serious injuries which were the causes of their deaths. The teacher tells the surgeon that if he can fix their injuries by dawn, they will be able to return to the world of the living. If not, at dawn when their bodies are refilled with blood, they will die again and return to the afterlife. And so, the surgeon embarks upon a night of non-stop surgeries to try and save the family from death. Again.

I was apprehensive of this book when I started it. I do not gravitate towards medical stories in either TV or books. But this story quickly presented itself to be more than that. It became a conversation between religion and science. Would the surgeon playing God by sending the dead back to the living? As the surgeon is working through the night, he learns more about the afterlife from the teacher. Credit must be given to Paralkar for imagining one of the most unique afterlives I have ever read about--the afterlife is a bureaucracy. This presents another parallel to the surgeon's life, as the clinic is a so-called victim of bureaucracy as well. This allows for interesting analysis on the role of bureaucracy in our society. 

It took me about of the third of the book to really get into it. That was because I had a hard time reading the characters. As a doctor, he did not have the response I was expecting him to have when three dead people showed up at his clinic. The pharmacist, a young woman who works for him, was not getting enough credit as I thought she deserved in the beginning. However, the character development is stellar in this book, and even in such a story novel, the characters are well-rounded and they were a pleasure to read about and learn more about. 

The novel did end abruptly. I was reading it on my Kindle so I was unprepared when I turned the page and that was the end of the novel. The ending was satisfying, I just wish that it was a little bit more drawn out to maintain more of the tension and to allow more time to think about the questions the story asks.

The questions that this novel poses about religion and medicine and how they influence or impact each other are ones I will be thinking about for a while.

A very good, earnest tale with well-written characters and interesting plot. This talented author writes with a really style and this has the feel of a play, and it's quite engaging. Recommended if seeking a magic realism read.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

Sort of magical realism, sort of allegory, sort of horror. I was enchanted and repulsed in equal measure, but in all the best ways. A very atmospheric novel that at times reminded me of Pan’s Labrynth. So smart and twisty.

Thank you to NetGalley, Counterpoint Press, and Catapult for this ARC, out January 2020!

I absolutely breezed through this book in no time at all.  From the description, it sounded more like a dark comedy, but it truly is more of a life or death (no pun intended) thriller from beginning to end.  I really didn't know what to expect going in, but Paralkar paints his pictures so vividly, and sometimes a little too vividly in regards to all of the surgical procedures that take place.  He clearly has done his research, but more than that, he knows how to create characters that take on a life of their own, and you feel for each person throughout this novel.  I loved that it all took place in one area, which is a thing I also tend to love in films as well.  Even though the story is confined to a small space, it never feels that way.  It is a tale of the afterlife, human nature, faith, and above all human kindness and what lengths we will go to to save ourselves and those we love.  I can't wait for people to be able to read this, and now I need to get my hands on Paralkar's other work!