Format: Paperback
Pages: 389
ISBN: 9789382473459
Price: INR 245
The first thing that strikes you about this book is the elegantly done cover with its minimalist design. From the cover, you gather the book is about cars and/or maybe racing and you won’t be wrong. Hitesha Deshpande’s second book “Horseshoe Garage” is about a new type of technology called Neo-Racing and addresses Indian racing dreams. Unfortunately, it isn’t for those hard-core racers but rather at the newbies to racing. It’s the type of book that you can imagine as a Bollywood movie.
The book starts off with Sav (short for Sarvesh) realising that his beloved Neo-Racing has finally reached India and that prompts him to give up his well-paying job at Grant Motors along with his friend Rags. Sav and Rags agree to pool in all their savings for Neo-Racing and find a bunch of rag-tag teammates to go ahead and build a Neo-Racing car to compete. In this process, they come across Naaz, the beautiful, Neo-Racing fanatic mechanic (basically, an Indian Megan Fox from “Transformers”) and our hero, Savs, promptly falls in love with her. The rest of the story is about how the underdog overcomes all hurdles to reach the finals of the Neo-Racing Championship.
It’s the quintessential Indian movie with the misunderstanding between the hero and the heroine, the over-acting mother, the good vs. bad aspect, the underdog team and the “jigari dosti”. That being said, the book is full of clichés and obvious twists. The Yash Raj-ness of the book spoils it all, and the races seem a tad bit too unreal, even for the most imaginative minds. Anyone who beyond passing awareness about the F1 knows that racers cannot be made in a month.
The book does offer good discussions on car interiors, manufacturing and internals. For only these do you continue reading the book though the ending is a bit to apparent. The unrealistic-ness of the book irks you at some point: A car made all out a few savings, with random mechanics. F1 racers made in a month. The love-story, the friendship, the mother-son act, the small boy trying to achieve his big dream – this book has too much going on.
I would have preferred this book to be shorter with more emphasis on the racing than everything else the book has given emphasis too.
Overall Rating: 5.5/10
More Details:
The author on Facebook: Hitesha Deshpande
The author on Twitter: Hitesha Deshpande
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