Review: 4 stars
1984 is terrifying, bleak, intricate, detailed and downright depressing,Fahrenheit 451 is lyrical. Before reading this classic by Ray Bradbury, my approach to dystopian novels was something as follows: gingerly open the first page, read few more, shut the book and pick it up after 6 months or so. I hated Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , thought The Maze Runner and the Divergent series to be bland, monotonous, riddled with cheap thrills and frankly pointless, whatsoever. This isn’t my favorite genre and you won’t find me willingly picking them up off the shelves.
But Payal did that job for me. She plunked Fahrenheit 451 from the Amazon cart and dropped it in my lap. I thank her for that because I actually liked it quite a bit. Bradbury indeed is the prophetic doomsayer as the jacket proclaims, but he is much more than that. There is music in his words, and you invariably find your fingers moving along a particular passage or quote, again and again. There is a theatrical fervor in the sentences – they rise, fall, come forward, hide, zip across in a blur & meander forever and for all the eternity, back again they rise, fall, rise, rise, zip across and meander, stop and there is silence, like somebody is holding his breath to underscore its potency as a dramatic effect, then again gushes into verbiage.
It is a book about books, and the burning of books; it is a book that offends and a book in which offensive books are condensed into a precise of unoffending, bland slush only to disappear into the oblivion as mass media and instant gratification hook every sensation-junkie of a human into unsettling happiness; it is a book that touches hearts and it is a book about empty hearts that don’t touch another soul; it is a book about an unreal future and a book whose prophetic claims about future actually manifest into reality – in short, it is a book that has lot to do with books and every other receptacle of knowledge and remembrance.
It is indeed a one fine read. Do give it a try.
Alienman 