Tilly Bagshawe: Mistress of the Game...the Game of Banking on a Brand Name??

Pre-script: This probably is a kind of review you never have read or heard of before...it hardly touches the aspect of the book but rather bears all the characteristic of something written by me (yeah, tangential is the term) and well, it's my most dedicated effort to stay with one single topic....which as you must know, is kind of impossible for me :D :D

Sidney Sheldon, I am sure everyone must have heard this name...and anyone of us who likes to read (no matter what genre he/she prefers) must have read at-least one of HIS book...stressing on the his because for a long time I was under the assumption that Sidney, as the name sounds and suggests (at least to me) must be a girl...it's just once that I actually happened to look at the back cover of one of his novels which printed his snap that I realized, oh God, he is a guy!!!

Looking back, I realize that it's almost a decade since I read the first Sidney book (well, yeah I was spoiled pretty early I guess...it was probably 9th standard that I got my hands on "The Best Laid Plans" by the author...a friend had just passed it across..and I graduated from Nancy Drews to a new league :-o ) And well, I've this bad habit of sticking to an author till I finish almost all my collection, so it was all over by 12th...almost all (and don't be suspicious about my interest in Sidney Sheldons, I have completed most of the Robin Cook, all Jeffery Archer, complete Dan Brown, a good deal of John Grisham and Robert Ludlum too...all by the 2nd year of B.Tech...I miss my sincere reading days now :'( )

All said and done, I like he fast pace in his novels (though few of the books have a lot of, to my imagination, impossible crap attached to it) and I generally love the suspense factor in it...the mystery or even just finding out what actually happened to the lead characters...were they able to achieve their goals of life n kind of stuff...and yeah, I love the sitcom penned by the same author (which was another revelation...how on this earth can I dream that the writer of such novels is associated with something like I Dream of Jeannie!!!! )

My one week of break at home (at the end of which came "Bored and Unstable Me...") was kind of dedicated back to the author...I happened to catch up with a mini tele-series based on his novel "If Tomorrow Comes"  which so happens to be one of my favorite by him...and well, for once I was pleased with the way it has been adopted in the mini-series...the story hasn't been cut-short, the way Twilight's movie adaption ruined the novel (so much so that I couldn't bring myself to watch any movie after the first one....but I'm fine if they adapt the fourth one...given that, the fourth part novel itself was a big let down :( ) and neither has the story been stretched beyond limits (yeah, you are right I'm talking about Twilight again, the television serial made out of it by Ekta Kapoor...Pyaar ki yeh ek kahani..ufff X( ) Do catch up with the series, I really enjoyed it even after having read and remembering the novel...and even the 4-5 hours it's spread over passes with all the entertainment intact (in fact this happens to be the second novel adaptation I actually have liked, the first being Gone With the Wind, which actually made it possible for the people who can't read 1000 pages of the book to get the story...and to think of, even Harry Potter generally has been nicely adapted though I haven't got any after the 3rd one :-| )

And other than catching up his series, I finally happened to read a book...more out of curiosity than actually following my reading temptation...I happened to stumble upon the title "Mistress of the Game" which is being promoted as a sequel to Sheldon's "Master of the Game" and I in fact if you look at the cover, it makes you feel as if Sidney Sheldon himself is the author, which would be shocking given the fact that Mr. Sheldon died soon after his not-so-well novel "Are you afraid of the dark?" , a kind of sequel to my first book "Best Laid Plans" had come out...so well, me being me, dug a lil deeper and realized that the novels are actually penned by a woman named Tilly Bagshawe, who claims to love Sidney's book and has done a lot of research to come up with the sequel so that it sounds and shapes the way it would have been had Sidney himself would have written (if he ever would have...which I doubt :-/ )

So well, picked up the book...and thought of giving it a read and I don't know if it's my time away from books or if it's the way that the book was written, it took me almost the entire week to actually finish it... which happens to be a complete contrast to the usual way I finish a book within the day or in one sitting (yup, that's one more reason I try to stay away from books these days...I leave all other works pending for the love of novels) 

And finally coming to what I feel about the novel....the story is mostly carried from where it was left in Master of the Game...Tilly didn't have to work much on setting the background and behavior of the character, thankfully Sidney had made the leads strong enough to ensure no one dared change their touches....the new generation brought forward by Tilly was kind of expected...the one with a subtle and peaceful mother grows up to be strong and determined whereas the son of the willful headstrong mom is expectedly over-shadowed by her and kind of lost in the efforts to please her...the relationships in the novel were badly misplaced in the name of copying the lines of Sidney (yeah I know and accept that his story lines had some unacceptable relationship equations too but this one seems to make sure that not even one person is straight!!! over-exaggeration...) The story ended at some strange place (which scares me that Tilly might try to bring yet another sequel :-S ) and well, truly saying I didn't like the way Tilly actually led the story to crumble the empire which formed the back-bone of the story...it's just not the way it's supposed to be... #-o

So well, it's worth a read if you actually have read the sequel and would like to spend a lil more time with the characters you had come to love and hate...but I just don't agree with the next generation which has been showcased, with the exception of Gabe's character (which has it's own flaws but thankfully hasn't ever turned into a vindictive person and he in fact seems to be the only person to keep Lexi in check lest she turns up like Kate, her evil aunt)...I can condemn Tilly and the publisher on one hand to showcase the book such that one is led to believe it's  Sidney himself (and I till date doubt how Tilly got the permission to use his name this way on the covers and all) and on the other hand hats off to Tilly for trying out such a dangerous stuff...fans of Sidney can both embrace or criticize her badly...

But in either case, Tilly has found a new route to success...the die-hard followers of Sidney 'll definitely pick up the book to read it once...just to see how similar or different it is, to applaud or rubbish it...and I guess that things did work out with Tilly, for she is already out with another novel, and yet again has Sidney Sheldon's name in much bigger font and on top rather than her own name (makes me wonder, does she wants to live in the shadows of Sidney and let go of her chances as a writer with different personal touch?? )...in any case, yet to read any novel by her (which isn't claimed as having Sidney's touch, and yeah she I guess has 3-4 of them before she got hooked to Sidney #:-s)

One line verdict: Give it a read if:-

• you are a Sidney fan and have read most of his work... :-?
• you got nothing better to read (which you probably don't, given you read this long review =)) )
• you like reading about the life journey of people with lots of ups n down and of course things gone wrong...
• you have the stamina left to read the sequel after reading the original, which happens to be a thick book itself but delightful too (and has made me wonder many times that, yeah again a hindi serial, had once come up loosely based n it's story line...though I don't recollect the name, it had Smriti Irani playing the role of the nice good grand-child)

And those who read it, would be left like me...a lil confused...and left waiting for their prediction of another sequel coming up...

Rating (he ha ha...me n rating something...I know how I say that the only way I'll fail is if I check my papers myself...I am bad in giving marks :P ) Anyways I'll be good n pass it with a 3.25/5  (see I'm still with .25 ...that's the way we are marked in the department :()

I hope I have able to maintain some single track theme...fingers crossed...catch ya laters :-h

And yeah, I've been a lil too liberal with emoticons in this post...just that it's long since I saw Yahoo emoticons again (Gmail has conquered it) so was kind of in a mood to revisit the old memories with all those long forgotten icons <:-P