Something to Tell You/Hanif Kureishi

I haven’t yet read any of the Booker-shortlisted novels, not one. Partly because all of them seem to be out of stock at my library (and I’m trying to be very cautious while buying books these days, I am scared that my home-office-library is soon going to run of space!) and partly because, well there’s just so much being written about them that I want to let all the hype die down a bit, and then maybe I’ll read them when I’ve forgotten much of what was said.

What I have been reading instead, is Hanif Kureishi’s ‘Something to Tell You’, (Warning: That links to a review with a fair amount of plot details) a novel that didn’t make it to the Booker list, though there was some speculation that it would. Although Hanif Kureishi can no longer be called a ‘new’ writer, I discovered him only recently, when I picked up ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’, his first novel, and enjoyed it very much. Though the Indian/South Asian immigrant experience in the UK is a theme extensively explored, I thought The Buddha worked very well, because it was more than simply an account of this experience. While centering around a second-generation Asian kid in the UK, it was also a fantastic exploration of dysfunctional families, life in the stagnating suburbs and the desire of the young person to define his/her own life, a universal theme. (One other novel which takes the immigrant experience, yet goes so much beyond it, is Niven Govinden’s Graffiti, My Soul, one of the best I’ve read in recent times).

So, I came to ‘Something to Tell You’ with high expectations, and on reading the first few chapters, it felt as if they were going to pretty much be dashed. The novel, which revolves around a part-Asian, born-in-the-suburbs psychiatrist, starts off very slowly. For atleast six or seven chapters, I couldn’t figure out where this was going. There is an eccentric sister, a needy friend, patients with all kinds of issues and the doctor-narrator who seems to be having a fairly stable life in the midst of it all. Though he is dealing with issues in his own personal life (I am not going to give away too much here) and with a secret that he mentions casually (this is the ’something’ to tell), you don’t feel that these are of much consequence.

As the novel unfolds, the novel jumps between the past and the present and we are presented with the doctor’s somewhat chaotic past in contrast with the calm present, and gradually, we realize that the present is only deceptively calm; the ghosts of the past mingle with the weight of desires that can be liberating, yet must flout some norms to be successful. In that sense, the unfolding of the novel somewhat mirrors the exploration into the subconscious which the doctor deals with, everyday, in his sessions with his patients: it’s slow to come about, but when it does, there are rich dividends.

I found the ending a little too pat - the issues from the past, and indeed, the ’something’ to tell, which preys on the doctor’s mind, is resolved a bit too conveniently. The love of his life, Ajita, around whom the ’something’ revolves also never really emerged as a person to me, she is always a kind of fantasy seen through the doctor’s eyes. Though the doctor obsesses about her a great deal, she is actually the least interesting character in the novel.

But, other than that, the rest of the novel is very readable with a little patience. I like novels where the main character has an interesting vocation - it offers so many avenues for storytelling. Hanif Kureishi also reassures me that the immigrant novel is not just about alienation and identity, it can be an interesting story without those as the only themes; and that’s as it should be, for beyond style, language, narration, isn’t the writer ultimately a teller of stories?

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Tags: Book Reviews, hanif kureishi, something to tell you