Book review: Half Girlfriend - full flop

Chetan Bhagat’s Half Girlfriend is an unoriginal and oversimplified account of romance

A boy, a girl, romance and tragedy — Chetan Bhagat’s latest offering, Half Girlfriend has all the makings of a perfect Bollywood script but fails to impress as a decent read.

To start with, Bhagat did not write a book, he wrote a screenplay and he seems to have put in little effort in presenting it as a novel in its paperback format. The book is divided into three parts, one for each city — Delhi, Bihar and New York. The Delhi part, despite all its follies, is actually based on real-life possibilities. It showcases the struggles of Madhav, a boy from a village who doesn’t speak English, in elite Delhi schools like St Stephens. The romance in this section comes as a mixed bag but the titular character, Riya is quite impressive — an Indian girl who plays basketball instantly captures the reader’s attention. But while there are some unusual character twists, there is an equal amount of cheesiness that dampens their novelty.

The book goes downhill from here as nothing really happens in Bihar. We meet Rani Sahiba, Madhav’s likeable mom and have a few laughs but the Bihar episode of the Riya-Madhav story is mundane and unrealistic overall. It also seems as if it has been lifted from the Bollywood movie, Swades. It is the part set in New York, however that seems most influenced by Bollywood and is clichéd enough to make one cringe.

Author Chetan Bhagat

Even though Half Girlfriend is disappointing overall, it does have a few good things worth mentioning. For example, it is written in incredible detail which makes it fairly easy for the reader to visualise what is going on. In terms of literary quality, while the language is fairly simple, this book is way ahead of Bhagat’s earlier works.

The storyline, however, is extremely weak. Forget nuance and layers, the book lacks even a basic structure, which leaves the reader lost and confused in a few instances. Even the title has virtually no relevance to the basic premise of the book and seems like a marketing gimmick meant to incite the reader’s curiosity.

Moreover, the main characters of the book lack depth and are extremely hard to relate to. Madhav, the royal boy from Bihar, who is not-so-royal anymore, is stereotypical and crude. He cannot speak English and his resulting inferiority complex is exaggerated beyond comprehension. Riya, the basketball playing, independent girl seems impressive in the beginning, but soon loses that charm due to her idiotic and senseless actions in Bihar and New York. On the whole, Rani Sahiba is perhaps the only solid character in the entire story.

To sum it up, Half Girlfriend could classify as Chetan Bhagat’s worst book but might just make for a perfect Bollywood romantic-comedy.

Samra Muslim is a digital marketing professional, an avid reader and a movie buff. She tweets @samramuslim

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, January 18^th, 2015.