Empty Wallet by Jagadish Jaganathan : Book Review

Title      : Empty Wallet

Author : Jagadish Jaganathan

Genre   : Corporate Drama

Pages    : 256

I received this Review Copy from Half Baked Beans in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Half Baked Beans and Book Marketing Consultant Richa Saxena!!

Blurb

“He is trying to become the fucking Rockefeller of my business. He wouldn’t back down and he wouldn’t have been what he is today had he backed down.”

Ezhil must now choose his next steps carefully to save his startup, which has narrowly escaped the damages of a massive cyber-attack. Gone are the days when he employed night time riding to rule the empty streets of Bangalore on a borrowed bike. While those who stood by him started leaving, it was up to him to fight the monster and save the company, even if he has to become a monster himself?

A corporate thriller chronicling the back and forth journey of an enigmatic character as he tries to come to terms with the ghosts of his past and present.

Review

Empty Wallet is a story of an Entrepreneur, Ezhil Kumaran who owns a successful Logistic company which he had built from scratch by putting lots and lots of hard-work and time into it. His company is victoriously ruling the market and suddenly out of nowhere Ezhil Kumaran decides to sell his profitable company and plans to spend the hell load of money he had earned for so many years.

The book is divided into five parts, first and the last part focuses on the present whereas the remaining middle parts talks about the way in which Ezhil started his business venture and how he became successful. The writing style of the author was really refreshing like a gust of wind before the rain. It was a very matured writing. The narrative style of the Jagadish was  damn interesting. It was written in such a way, the readers would yearn to read more but dialogue writing is the part where the author kind of lagged behind slightly when compared to the standards of his writing and narrative style. But at the same time his dialogues gave an essence of South Indian touch to the book which will help the readers in understanding the kind of environment the story is set.

There was an unorthodox flavor to the book, for example the parts which focuses on the present is narrated from omniscient third person and the past was narrated from first person perspective. Though it was strange and new (at least for me) the unorthodox writing style of the author was unique and to be frank it didn’t bother me much. 

The plot-line of the story was simple and pinpoint. The author had written the complexities of running a start-up in a very layman kind of way without puzzling the readers by unnecessarily dumping technical jargon into it. The characters in the book kind of felt impersonal, the lead character Ezhil is a complete workaholic or more precisely you could call him a robot, he is simply driven by his desire to achieve great things in his business. So there is no point in expecting more emotion from him but still his character exhibited whatever he could. On the other hand, the supporting characters, though they all had significant role to be played, they still lagged some emotional characteristic and that made them slightly unreal. The author could’ve worked a bit more on characterizing them, after all the supporting characters are the ones who uphold the story firmly from the foundation.

This book also clearly manifested the tinge of selfishness in human being however good they might be through the character of Ezhil Kumaran. And this characteristic of Ezhil made him more real and it wasn’t unlikable or something because the author had rightly justified his doings. Certain details and scenes in the book felt highly unwanted because those insignificant details didn’t matter when it comes to the course of the book and it was completely pointless. The author could’ve simple omitted them.

Initially, love parts injected into the story felt like a redundant and forced addition to the book but as the story commenced, the love parts and Deepika’s role took a vital place in the plot. If one thing that showed Ezhil Kumaran was a human, it was the relationship he shared with Deepika. And I also loved the way the author had taken forward their story.

The story of a middle class boy achieving great things in the corporate world was really inspiring and dream like. The detail description of the scenario in which the protagonist grew up gave a very different and personal aura to the story. The way Ezhil built his business was exciting and interesting to read. Though the blurb says it is a corporate thriller, there wasn’t any component to qualify it as one, it can more precisely called as corporate drama. And also there wasn’t much details about certain characters who left the plot half way because of that, the story felt incomplete in that aspect.

My Views

I liked the book right from the very first page. Though initially I felt bad when the protagonist decided to sell his company but with the due course of the story I understood why and was really happy he did that. It was a simple story with a good plot-line. As the setting of the story was in the southern part of India and as I’m from there it was mildly relatable to me at certain instances.

I would obviously recommend this book to people. This book would be best suited for people who are into corporate dramas and to people who are working in corporate companies. And also striving entrepreneurs and business students might get highly inspired by reading this book.

My rating for this book would be 4 out of 5 stars

I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I did!!

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Happy Reading Folks!!!!

~ Meenu