50books_poc | 19-21/50: Qamar, Teo, Whitehead (Reply)

I borrowed all of these from the library, but they don't have a lot else in common - the first is a YA, coming of age (or responsibility) novel, set in contemporary Pakistan; the second, a literary novel that mixes general and personal histories to create various identities (in families, in cultures, in racial/ethnic groups); and the third is a satire, sharp and uncomfortable. More details follow - spoilers, definitely, for the first book, and the second two I talk about how I felt about the endings, although am hopefully vague enough about actual events.

Amjed Qamar, Beneath my mother's feet. Nazia is hard-working, intelligent and loyal, and growing up in Karachi these are all good qualities until her father is injured at work, and her mother pulls her from school to help clean houses to earn money. At which point loyalty – and being a beti, a dutiful daughter – becomes more difficult.

I liked a lot of this. I liked how it shows how fragile “comfortable” lives can be, at this economic level, with one accident spiralling out into the destruction of a whole family, and I liked the way Nazia and her family are quite clearly part of a whole community, with all the different layers of privilege and expectation. I liked the food, and the language – Urdu terms are italicised the first time they appear and accompanied by a brief definition, but after that they become part of the text, which I thought was a great way to do it (there’s a short vocab list at the back). I liked the way Nazia’s relationship with her mother developed.

Where I had problems – and vast numbers of spoilers follow – is in the working out of the problem the book poses, between loyalty to your family and loyalty to your own individual needs/desires. Both Nazia’s father and her brother are presented as bad for following their own needs at significant costs to the family. Nazia’s work for her family is presented as good. However, the solution to Nazia’s situation, in the book, is to leave her family and return to school, taking with her her mother’s savings. In this case, her mother gives her the money (rather than her brother, who steals it), and the text says that her mother will be with her, even when they are apart, but I’m a bit unsure how this will play out in terms of Nazia’s diminished family (and narratively underdeveloped siblings) will cope without her. I think I might have bought this if it felt bittersweet rather than triumphant, and, also, if there weren’t a significant subplot with Nazia trying to help a child servant escape the rigors of his job. Something about the way so many of the characters escape family responsibilities but it’s only good if Nazia’s doing it/inspiring it made me a little uneasy. Hmm. (the title, by the way, refers to the location of the gates of heaven according to the Prophet Muhammad, rather than Nazia's position, but I presume it's meant to sound ambiguous.)

Hsu-Ming Teo, Love and Vertigo. Grace Tay’s mother kills herself by jumping from her brother’s high-rise apartment in Singapore. Grace, who came to Sydney from her birth country of Malaysia with her family (originally Singapore Chinese) flies back to Singapore for the wake, and the unravelling of her own and her parents’ pasts.

The historical part of this starts with the Japanese occupation of Singapore, and then in 1969 intersects with the anti-Chinese riots in Malaysia. I found the working out of issues of identity, ethnicity and behaviour (both for the parents, and for Grace, growing up in the inner west of Sydney) fascinating, and the themes of transformation and what each character looks for in others (often mistakenly), and the tensions within the family are all very well done (food – as a gift, a duty, or a means of sharing experience – is also a crucial part of this). As is the writing – this won the Australian/Vogel award in 1999.

What didn’t work for me was the sheer unlikeability of the characters. I think of this as a characteristic of a lot of modern “literary” fiction – possibly resulting from the belief that something cannot be realistic if it’s happy – and possibly this is the sort of personal bias that meant I spent a lot of my English degree reading 18th and 19th century novels, where you were still allowed to enjoy yourself. In this book, there are too few moments where I actually feel for the characters, and so when they are unkind to each other (thoughtlessly or intentionally) it lacks enough contrast for me to care. There are exceptions – the event that finally pushes Grace’s mother to commit suicide did prompt an emotional response in me, but more importantly it made Sonny (Grace’s brother) react in a way that made me see him as a person with feelings. With Grace I think this is supposed to happen for me at the ending, when she’s talking to her father, but I haven’t liked her enough throughout the book for this to resonate for me.

(in an unrelated note, I obviously need to read more books set in places I’ve lived in, because I was thrilled to see all the little familiar bits of Sydney).

Colson Whitehead, Apex hides the hurt. I picked this up because I loved The Intuitionist, which may have elevated my expectations – I enjoyed this, for the most part, but I didn’t love it, and possibly it’s suffered a bit by comparison. It’s still very good.

The nameless protagonist is a nomenclature consultant, famous in his field for product names such as New Luno (soda), Loquacia (an anti-shyness medication) and Q-100 (hybrid cars), and famous to all for naming Apex, sticking plasters matched to skin colour. Events put him in a small town considering a name change – originally named Freedom by escaped slaves who settled there, then changed to Winthrop after the rich white family who made their fortune in barbed wire, and now a millionaire software pioneer wants to change it to New Prospera. The nomenclature consultant must decide.

It’s a satire; about marketing, about names, about the way we hide unpleasant things (under new names or under bandages), and about race. It’s sharp, short and uncomfortable, but these characteristics also make it a little distant as a reading experience. I really liked the moments when the barrier between the protagonist and the world around him broke down – his ongoing feud with the hotel cleaner, the journalist who just keeps asking him, “Are you keeping it real?”, which also broke the boundaries of the book enough to drag me in before I realised. I am also fond of the last line.