Rejoinder: ‘Why conflate the character’s views with the author’s?’

A review of my novel The Grudges of Gajanan Godbole on Scroll left me bewildered about whether the reviewer was motivated by the spirit of striking a blow against “bad” literature or by displeasure about a book that was not to her taste. Unfortunately, the reviewer ignored the craft and story-telling tools used in the writing of this novel.

For one thing, there was the insinuation framed in the question “Is the character a perverted creep or is that the author’s own view of women and sex?” This was prompted by the novel being written in the first person, a literary device I used to liberate the narrative from any kind of objectivity and tell a wicked, sadistic, twisted old man’s tale in his own wicked words, which includes his views on women and sex. In conflating the character’s views with the author’s, the reviewer appears to suggest that authors are incapable of writing anything but their own views through characters.

My book is a veritable collection of nasty characters – both men and women – and only one woman becomes a murder victim. The majority of those who face Gajanan’s wrath are men. “Sex” hardly figures as a leitmotif in my book, and yet the review returns to it...

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