It’s August 1985, and Ananda, a student of English at the University of Central London with aspirations to be a poet, has a whole day to fill. We follow him reluctantly get out of bed, fret about the neighbours’ noise, miss his mother who has recently returned to Bombay, attend a meeting with his tutor, and hang out with his equally eccentric uncle, Rangamama, as they separately reminisce and bicker about their lives. Their territory is Bloomsbury, Hampstead and Belsize Park, a world of disappointing Indian restaurants, public transport, and potentially racist drunks. Inveterate outsiders, not just in London but in Asia, too: their Sylheti Hindu heritage having been twice rebranded (first with Partition, then with Bangladeshi independence) and leaving a legacy of “Indian” restaurants and the revered poet, Tagore. Desperately unhappy, the two men cling to each other despite their differences, Ananda possibly seeing his empty future in his uncle.
It’s hard to know what to make of a novel comprised of all the minute quotidian detail that most novels would cut out. There are touches of humour, and I especially enjoyed this exposition on the lack of reference to lavatorial necessities in Western film and literature (p128-9):
It’s hard to know what to make of a novel comprised of all the minute quotidian detail that most novels would cut out. There are touches of humour, and I especially enjoyed this exposition on the lack of reference to lavatorial necessities in Western film and literature (p128-9):
and I might have appreciated it even more had I been better able to detect the links with Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses, or the wider Western literary canon which it seems intent to satirise. But without that anchor, I kept wondering why these characters, why this point in time. The fine detail – including the names and locations of various restaurants, which presumably change identities over time – suggests it could be semi-autobiographical, but I didn’t want to have to check. Nor did I want to get out my London A-Z and plot their journey through streets I vaguely recognised, while wondering what the reading experience might be like for someone with even less experience of the capital than me.
While this might sound a bit gripey, I didn’t not enjoy it; in fact, I was impressed with a writer who could keep my attention with so little plot. But I didn’t love it either, though it could be testament to the author’s skill that it left me feeling as much an outsider to this novel as the characters portrayed. Thanks to Oneworld for my review copy.
While this might sound a bit gripey, I didn’t not enjoy it; in fact, I was impressed with a writer who could keep my attention with so little plot. But I didn’t love it either, though it could be testament to the author’s skill that it left me feeling as much an outsider to this novel as the characters portrayed. Thanks to Oneworld for my review copy.
RSS Feed
