Book Review: Twenty Three by Bikramjit Sen

Twenty Three- Collection of short stories
Author: Bikramjit Sen
Publisher: Notionpress.com
Rating: 3.5/5

Emotions are innate; they surface occasionally. But not all emotions are known to mankind. There are rarely some genuine moments that give us a chance to experience something deeper than the usual happiness and sadness. ‘Twenty Three’ is a collection of twenty-three short stories that speak about such sincere moments and elaborate on the emotions felt during those times.

With an abstract cover having an amalgamation of different colours, each symbolizing a sentiment, this author does justice to the first look. Covering a vast range of topics like after-life, reincarnation, immortality, spiritual awakening, putting first things first (prioritizing) and introspection-retrospection- the stories have been cherry picked to elucidate each concept. However, the mix and merge is not uniform. Since it is always better to handle things one at a time, the author’s approach to deal with such topics in such brevity doesn’t leave the readers satiated.

Barring the selection, the grammatical errors irk the readers and that might come as a turn-off! Some of my favourite picks are:

I. Psycho– a story that is totally relatable and explores a very genuine issue of the irrational behaviour of children.
II. Heated– a story that capitalizes on a very well truth of life that being proactive is better than being reactive
III. The Legendary Tale of Jatayu– an old classic that can be relived through this book
Other stories are good but they fail to pass the muster.

Overall, considering that a 22-year-old has penned down this book, the effort of thinking out of the box and touching upon such offbeat topics is commendable. However, a more revised and topic-related selection would have been appreciated.

Buying Link: Amazon