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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I Am Not, I Feel Certain, Finished With Love.", August 22, 2008
Jamal Khan, the narrator of Hanif Kureishi's outrageously wonderful latest novel SOMETHING TO TELL YOU is one of the most unusual protagonists you are likely to meet. Middle-aged with an expanding midriff, he is a psychoanalyst fond of quoting Freud, Dante, Proust, Faulkner, Updike, et al. with never enough money to support his estranged wife Josephine, his beloved twelve-year-old son Rafi or his own spending habits as he wears green Paul Smith loafers, among other luxuries. The son of a Pakistani father and English mother, he is haunted by his first love, a beautiful Indian woman, and at the same time guilt-ridden because of an unconfessed crime. It is no accident that he refers often to Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov.
Jamal is surrounded by a cast of characters that Kureishi draws with a myriad of details so that they come alive as complex human beings on every page. His sister Miriam, whose face is covered with what the writer calls "nuts and bolts" and whose body is full of tattoos, is a Muslim single mother of either five children by three different men or three children by five men-- Jamal cannot remember. Her new lover Henry is a theatre and film director and her brother's best friend. He is separated from his wife Valerie; their two children are Lisa, a social worker who eschews the material, having once lived in a tree and having thrown paint at McDonald's and, according to one character, probably has dirt between her toes; and Sam who is outraged when he catches his father and Miriam engaged in S/M sex. The beautiful Indian woman is Ajita, who harbors her own dark secret; her brother is Mustag who becomes a popular singer; their father is the owner of a factory in London. There are at least a half dozen more characters just as interesting in this almost four-hundred-page novel that teems with life. London, from the 1970's to the present, particularly the area around West London, becomes a character in itself. Mick Jagger even makes an appearance.
Although there is a lot of sex here in at times a most comical story-- about any variety you can think of from sex clubs, houses of prostitution, orgies, male-female sex, male-male, female-female, you name it-- this novel ultimately is about things most serious: the cancerous effect of guilt, missed opportunities, the dynamics between parents and children, racial prejudice, extremism from both the left and right, the consequences of terrorism,but also hope and the wonder of love and its longevity. Jamal on the subject: "I am not, I feel certain, finished with love, either in its benign or its disorderly form, nor it with me."
Kureishi writes beautifully with such phrases as a "stoned Lady Bracknell," a "Gioconda smile," a "springy Salome," and "the latest supermodel of hysteria [as in Freud], Princess Diana." One of the passages that rises to poetry is Jamal's description of his love for his son: "When he was little, I kissed Rafi continuously, licked his stomach, stuck my tongue in his ear, tickled him, squeezed him until he gasped, laughing at his beard of saliva, his bib looking like an Elizabethan ruff. I loved the intimacy: the boy's wet mouth, the smell of his hair, as I'd loved those of various women."
Finally SOMETHING TO TELL YOU is one fantastic story that you will race through; if there is any justice, it certainly will make the next Booker Prize list.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Coming of Age at Any Age, September 21, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
What makes this book so special is that our hero thought he'd come of age in the 80's, but had to reach the present day to fully realize his maturity. Kureish's proficiency in language honed through his wonderful screenplays is evident in dialogue that jumps off the page, including the observations by Jamal, the narrator, some of which are hilariously funny. (e.g., "There are few people who when they are old wish they'd led a more virtuous life; most people wish they'd sinned more; they also wish they'd taken better care of their teeth.) So many characters are so vividly portrayed making this one of those books that you hope to find a sequel several years down the road, to find out what happened to these people and how their lives continued to evolve. Not only Jamal, the central character, comes of age, but all those around him, even his own son who deserves a storyline all his own. Not to mention his sister, Miriam, who, although I'm glad we don't live next door to each other, I would welcome as a friend.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
3 and a half stars-A broad slice of lives, November 8, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This was not an easy read but it has enough depth and detail to warrant the patience required to finish it. This is a novel that feels very autobiographical and as such has a deep sense of longing for that centrist existense that is denied to us through the act of living. If things are going well for the main character Jamal Khan, then count on it becoming upset. Whether it's his past, which is not as far away as he'd hoped, or dealing with the changing standards of his own sexuality as he accepts his middle age, he has a lot on his plate.
Jamal is a psychoanalyst and one of those who runs with the popular, artistic and elite crowd among London's movers and shakers. He's a minor success but also a peripheral inhabitant of these socially elite. His best friend is a playwright and director named Henry. Henry has a reputation for genius in the theater but now sees his career coming to an end and has a serious mid-life crisis.
Through Henry's friendship Jamal has earned a place among London's artistsic and social elite. This gives him the opportunity to have wealthy clients to offset his expenses and exercise his desire to help the poorer ones.
The one thing that gives me pause here is the way Jamal's attitude towards others or himself is both pragmatic and problematic. He sees the logical problems of human consience and emotional desire. He notes how history shapes us. However, there is no idealogy that allows us to move beyond those influences. Acceptance helps but it is not a cure. I actually like this perspective but I think many would see it as an excuse to remaining flawed and revel in it. The character (and author's) take on the myth of what passes for normal was particularly insightful.
So what we discover as this story unfolds is that the characters are always influenced by their own actions. An incident that is built upon and realized in this story is the central binding concept that we are what we've done, even the huge mistakes that are otherwise considered out of charcater. We cannot move past it but we can resolve to accept it and therefore endeavor to learn from it. Jamal's sister, Miriam is someone who has a hard time moving beyond anything, using her life's mistakes to shore up her fortress until that becomes so unwieldy that it finally collapses with the unexpected onset of a romantic interest in her messy life.
The past that Jamal has tried so hard to insulate himself from only continues to stay one step behind him, whether it's the lust/love he still harbors for his ex-wife, the son who is feeling more neglected and is acting it out, or his long lost love and the one terrible night when he decided to confront her problem.
My reservations with this story is not it's content, though it is more complex than it has to be, a kind writing style that often has more in common with that dreaded stream of consciousness than it does with well paced prose. No, my problem is that the overlapping nature of all the players seems to be an effort at layering the story. It's a heady balancing act. On most levels I understand the need to write it this way but the back and forth timelines are annoying and often thrown in without much effort at determining the context. It also would have helped to set this solidly in a time period. As written devices go this has a way of grounding the reader and making them more personallly involved. On the other hand, based upon the way this was written, the author did not allow himself much wiggle room to introduce such a timeline. A strong argument could be made for such a timeline's inclusion being seen as pure artifice.
I enjoyed the book and will likely read his work again. The perspective of life in London for a Pakistani transplant is also engaging. As, what was once white Western Europe gives way to a more mixed, ethinically diverse culture, we're seeing the grand reshuffling of the world. Voices like those of Hanif Kureishi will make that transition easier to understand and appreciate.
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