Customer Reviews

Londonstani

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Londonstani starts out great, with a realistic (realistic-feeling to an outsider, anyway) look at a newly-affluent youth culture getting in trouble in London, along the lines of Quadrophenia or Absolute Beginners (the baddie is a desi Vendice Partners). The first half is great and original, with dialogue reminiscent of The Committments, and the plot thickens nicely, but by the end it dissolves into Scarface cliches and a crying-in-a-rainy-cemetery scene. In the last couple chapters, the plot gets less and less realistic (a typical situation where anyone but a fictional character would just leave town, commit suicide, or go to the police) but still holds together well, and the book would get four stars if it wasn't completely ruined by a cheap, irrelevant M. Night Shamalayn surprise-ending in the last couple pages that negates the signifigance of the rest of the story.

This was a good read. Much of the book is written in dialect, similar to how Irvine Welsh captures the Scots accents of his characters, so it helps if you're at least passingly familiar with British slang and idioms. But if you can get over the occasional stumble (and there is a glossary in the back), _Londonstani_ is an insightful and educational look into the desi subculture in London.

While it's true that the book features crime, and "gangsta" type characters, it is not an exploitation novel. In truth, it's more _The Outsiders_ than _Goodfellas,_ with even a few _Catcher in the Rye_ moments. Malkani knows his characters and he makes them believable, flawed and human.

Watch out, also, for Malkani's tricks of the language. There are more than a few sudden turns here, where you think you know what's going on throughout an entire chapter, and not until the very last paragraph do you realize that what you thought was going on was really something else again. Indeed, it's not until the very end of the book that we realize the full tragic proportions of Malkani's troubled main character.

Recommended. I look forward to Malkani's next book.

Overall, you have to be impressed with Malkani's pyrotechnics. Jas's descriptions of his adventures was reminiscent of the style of A Clockwork Orange. Malkani's done his research in that the argot of these rudeboys rings true. However, Malkani seems to bend over backwards to make the machinations of his plotting work. The ending was so far removed from anything that had gone before that I was wondering whether it was slapped on to make some one from "on high" happy.

It was a worthwhile read to get a glimpse of the desi culture. But you'll have to be prepared to suspend your belief when you get to the final pages.

Malkani does an excellent job of immersing the reader in the British desi subculture and his mixing of Hindi, Urdu, and English slang makes for an interesting read however, the twist at the end was a cop-out. So much so that I felt cheated after I finished the book. What does occur does not make much sense given what we are told about Hardjit, Amit and Ravi and the other desi characters. I really believe the book would have been a lot stronger if Malkani had stuck to one theme instead of trying to be all things to all people. Of course, he cannot give us a solution to what many desis face today: how to respect the past but live a life of one's choice but Malkani completely sidesteps the issue in his ending. In short: I loved the first two-thirds of the book and then felt robbed by the denouement. I would still recommend people read it for the sociological aspect and for understanding the other half of desi youth culture that isn't focused on the stereotypical academic achievement path.

This debut novel by financial journalist Malkani is well worth reading and deserves much respect for its brilliant recreation of a particular form of urban patois. Set in Hounslow, in West London (adjacent to Heathrow Airport), it revolves around four South Asian teenagers who style themselves as hard rudeboys. Or rather, three rudeboys, and one new hanger-on who narrates the tale. The story more or less concern the antics of the foursome as they cruise around the hood, posing in their flash cars (actually belonging to their parents), acting tough while skiving off from studying for examination retakes. Eventually, a cell phone scam they run brings them into contact with a wealthy playboy from their hood, who brings them in on a much more profitable scam, and in touch with the high life.

All of this is fairly interesting, but mainly a backdrop for a larger (and often quite funny) exploration of immigrant assimilation, cultural authenticity, racism, class, and youth culture. A good portion of the book involves how these British born and bred teens negotiate their identities. On the street they are self-styled hoods, while at home they are obedient, deferential children. In contrast to their immigrant parents who kept a low profile in order to assimilate, these boys demonstrate their unwillingness to assimilate by maintaining a high profile. Similarly, they blend a variety of South Asian cultural attitudes and styles with that of American and British black culture. This is all teased out in the interactions of the boys, as well as a subplot involving the arranged marriage of one of the boys' older brothers, and another subplot involving a sexy Muslim girl. The material could easily become didactic or dry in the wrong hands, but in Malkani's rendering, it comes alive through the freshest, fizziest dialogue since Trainspotting. And like that book, the combination of Punjabi, Black, British, and Text Message slang might intimidate some readers (especially older ones) at first, after about ten pages, most will be comfortable with it rhythms.

What keeps the book from being truly excellent is the problem of what the narrator is doing hanging out with the other three. He's clearly been a bit of a nerd or non-entity his whole life, and just why these status-obsessed rudeboys would more or less adopt him is never satisfactorily explained. While it does make sense that you would have an outsider or newcomer narrate this story so that they can explain everything that's self-evident to the other main characters and present an opposing viewpoint, the dissonance between him and the others never goes away. There's also a "gotcha" twist at the end that adds nothing and only raises further questions of plausibility. Nonetheless, the book is an entertaining and thought-provoking fictional look at a particular subculture that anyone with an interest in modern Britain should check out.

Londonstani is an interesting and powerful debut novel. Telling the story of Asians in Britain not as a 'life in the ghetto' expose but as upwardly mobile middle class kids who rebel against their traditionalist family backgrounds by affecting a kind of rude boy image, replete with body building, facial hair sculpting, valuing money and consumer goods and generally trying to assert their masculinity on the world in a naive manner hits a lot of chords.

The Desi patois is slick and skilfully done. The author has clearly researched his social group and knows a great deal about the sociological and economic factors that influence the kids in Hounslow (he is, after all a Cambridge educated Financial Times journalist). There is a wicked twist at the end which is alluded to at several points in the book (see if you can spot it - but no peeking). Some of the narrative is a little too ideas laced - as if the writer had several different sociological themes he wanted to shoehorn into the plot. But it is an important and interesting addition to Asian themed literature in London and deserving of its wide acclaim.

This is a difficult read because it is written the way modern urban youth speak, or rather text message. Substantively, this book is akin to A Clockwork Orange. However, this book will never achieve the imaginative and literary heights of Burgess' creation. The conclusion will disappoint most readers.

This is a fabulous first novel. Malkani tackles the problems of assimilation and self-definition in a multicultural society with an unflinching gaze. He beautifully captures the rhythm and color of the characters' London/South Asian accents, and he outlines with poignancy the intensity of their self-love, self-hatred and almost inexplicable anger. Some readers may complain that the book becomes rather histrionic, especially toward the end. There may be an element of truth to the complaint, but we are after all dealing with characters who in a real-life way find suddenly find themselves in above their heads; a pollyanna ending would not do the characters justice. There are no easy answers presented here, but there is lots of food for thought.

If you are a typical sheeple who loves senseless violence, the type of obvious coolness that can only be had by wearing crisp clothing with the latest ridiculous label on, racism, objectification of women, intolerable narcissism, weak plots and inane dialogue, this book is for you! If you are a sensible and ethical person, you might be so offended by this piece of crap that you actually rip it into pieces and recycle it (which is against all of your instincts as a lover of books) instead of dropping it off at Goodwill so that no young minds might become polluted by it. If you are a person of true moral conscience you will probably be incensed enough to drive back to the bookstore and buy all of the copies from the dollar bin to insure that these meet the same fate.

This book is about that, pure and simple. Who deserves respect, what it earns you, what you pay to get it, whether tradition is worth respecting for its own sake. Jas is an immature 19 year old who's actually too smart not to see the inherent absurdity in his devotee relationship with the neighborhood 'cool guys' but insecure enough not want to make the break. He and his friends crave respect but they confuse it with bulging muscles, easy sex, flash cars, big wads of cash and dodgy deals. It's no wonder they get in over their heads. Sure, the lingo gets a bit tedious, but the book can be very funny and the language provides a revealing look into the inexplicable minds of gormless boys foundering on the edge of manhood. (I do agree with another reviewer: the voice of the Wall Street NY'er was off. But he was just a bit player, so it's no matter.) The flip/flop actions of the boys around their parents were completely believable, as, unfortunately, were the parents' rigid views of proper custom and behavior. The book's denoument was suddenly too complex compared to what went before, and its ending twist a bit of theatrics. But after all is said and done, Londonstani is entertaining and even eye-opening in its authenticity and candor.