Gabriel's Gift: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "School-how was, today?..." (more)
Key Phrases: Lester Jones, Jake Ambler, Master Gabriel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Gabriel's father, a washed-up rock musician, has been chucked out of the house by Gabriel's mother, who works nights and sleeps days. Lonely Gabriel finds solace in a mysterious connection to his deceased twin, Archie, and in his gift for producing real objects simply by drawing them. Then a chance visit with rock star Lester Jones, his father's former band mate, provides Gabriel with a tool that might help mend his family. All he has to do is figure out how to use it.

Hanif Kureishi portrays Gabriel's naive hope and artistic aspirations with the same insight that he brought to the Anglo-Indian experience in The Buddha of Suburbia and to infidelity in Intimacy. Gabriel's Gift is a tender meditation on failure, talent, and the power of imagination, and offers a humorous portrait of a generation that only started to think about growing up when its children did.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction (September 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743217136
• ISBN-13: 978-0743217132
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #915,009 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #15 in

  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( K ) > Kureishi, Hanif

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A work of transition, November 22, 2001

By	Boris Bangemann "boyse" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gabriel's Gift: A Novel (Hardcover)

Hanif Kureishi's fiction is one of my minor addictions. I love his irreverent wit and the mastery of his dialogue. He is a truly gifted observer and listener. Kureishi is an interesting author because he vacillates between the self-assurance of the satirical writer and the vulnerability that is part of being human. He used to rage against the very people by whom he wanted to be loved - as if they could never love him enough. In this sense, "Intimacy" is his most instructive and illuminating book.
Gabriel's Gift is, in some ways, a re-run of his first novel, "The Buddha of Suburbia", this time with a happy end for the characters. Kureishi seems to have mellowed a lot since his earlier writings, but this change has not yet translated into a new style of writing or into new ideas. Gabriel's Gift is a book that gave me the sense of the author wanting to explore his roots as an artist in order to get somewhere, but he did not quite know where (which, of course, is not the hallmark of a great novel). But then again, Hanif Kureishi is always in search of himself. It is one of his strengths. Sometimes he delivers great writing along the way, at other times he does not.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Modern Fairy-tale, March 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Gabriel's Gift: A Novel (Hardcover)

Society is still as dark and deceptive as ever but Gabriel, Kureishi's most recent teenage protagonist, has the gift to dispel its gloom. Gabriel's ill-suited parents have finally separated, he is bored, left to his own devices and well on his way to becoming a drug addict. But, instead of following all the easy paths to becoming a failure, he decides to take his parents' problems into his own hands. Although the story is unrealistically idealistic, it carries with it an unmistakable aura of hope, in the modern shape of fame. Fame is the gift and the fairy that can deliver anybody in style from all the difficulties of twentieth-first-century living. Once more Kureishi injects his characteristic comedy and light-heartedness into a serious subject without too much irreverence and with a little more hope. As a modern fairy-tale, 'Gabriel's Gift' is able to offer a nice dream with just enough kick in the backside to keep it real.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Variation on a Well-Known Theme, January 20, 2008

By	Ford Ka (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews

It is difficult to tell why Hanif Kureishi did not come up with anything new but decided to replay the themes of his most successful novel The Buddha of Suburbia. However, he did when he shouldn't have. This is a nice novel but there is so little inside that you may pass it by and never miss it. If you don't know Kureish yet - get Buddha. Gabriel's a mistake.