Of Bad Writing and Worse Plots: Hina Tabassum's Excellence at Work deserves a miss


Look, I get that it’s unfair to review books like ‘Excellence at work’ when I was previously reviewing Kamila Shamsie or Mohsin Hamid. I understand that you can’t compare Man Booker Prize nominees with books that are so clearly what I would have written when I was a 15-year-old teenager whose sole exposure to criticism was her friends or family saying ‘you write well!’ But the thing is, even when I was a 15-year-old writer blinded by wishful thinking and naivety, I was still wide eyed enough to not actually publish that damn stuff.

And I get that there are child prodigies who have written books when they were really really young. But that’s why they are child prodigies. They are rare! That’s the whole point!

So even though on one hand I wanted to leave this book alone (I originally intended to leave a few words of encouragement and praise, but there is such a thing as flagrant lying, and I just cannot), the whole point is to review all and every piece of Pakistani literature produced. And this, unfortunately, definitely counts. 

Maybe my first indication to pull out should have been the first sentence: Amanda Watson is ‘the best detective the agency had ever had in years’. Who is this author’s English teacher, I ask you, and why aren’t the basics of ‘show, don’t tell’ taught to every student passing through the hallowed halls of Pakistani schools? But that’s small criticism compared to the rest of the drivel that is her story. The first half (ALL of the first half) revolves around a meeting with Amanda’s boss, where she tells him about this case she’s investigating. She tells him nothing of importance whatsoever. No names are taken, no suspense is built, no clues are discussed. She then proceeds to take a nap, catch a flight, get robbed at an airport, and give a final presentation without her stolen file.

The (thankfully very quick) end. 

This is simply poor storytelling, but more to the point, this is what one would call draft 1 of a story whose draft 483 might maybe get approved, and then get passed on to copy editing. It’s commendable simply in the fact that someone has the kind of thick skin required to put such amazingly bad prose out there. 

Five stars for the relentless pursuit of one’s dreams. A negative million for the story itself. 

Recommendation:

There is too much good literature out there. Just don’t.