Friday, October 4, 2013

An interesting book with an identity crisis – The Professional by Ashok Ferrey

I was excited from the moment I heard that there was a new Ashok Ferrey book was out and it was a full novel instead of a collection of short stories. My excitement was at fever pitch when I got the book into my hands and started flipping through the pages. The start was excellent and all it did was to whet my appetite to devour the book.
But as I was getting deeper in to the book something kept gnawing at the back of my head. Believe it or not it was a video of (one) of my favorite comedians Papa CJ. 
However there was nothing funny about this  video as this was a serious presentation he was making at a TED conference on “Being Yourself”. The sad thing was that this gentleman who was so used to making jokes could not make a serious presentation without drifting into comedy mode. To such a degree it diluted the point he was trying to get across. It was ironic.
This book made me feel the same way.
It was a beautiful story about a young man who has to resort to being a male gigolo to make ends meet while he is in the UK. The way the book started I believe he intended to write a dark, deep, serious story quite similar to Colombo by Carl Muller - but somehow he could not help but digress into the funny quirky humorous Ashok Ferrey we all know and love to read.

And therein lay the issue with this book. At least in my eyes and make me refer to it as a book with an identity crisis. Having said that I must confess that I did thoroughly enjoy reading the book and have no regrets in purchasing it.