21 - Wednesday, July 11, 1996 - North Shore News

books

New books explore the immigrant experience

| T HAS been said that

players, peripheral acquaintances,
civil issues and the pitfalls of a
reluctant, inept welfare state.

Dialogue and dialects are
rendered with accuracy and occa-
sional hilarity, the interweaving of
the characters’ loves and follies is
an interesting fif sometimes con-
fusing} device, but Dhondy
doesn't quite manage to pull the
various elements together
smoothly enough to convince the
reader that the themes from sev-
eral potential novels weren't cob-
bled into a fitful whole.

than others, that ‘sutfering for
one’s art’ can be cared too far
and that you don't mess with
Hindu morality fables.

Part of author Farrukh Dhondy's
problem fies with hts device of
switching from voice to voice,
personal story to personal story.
While the approach is a valid one,
the transitions are not quite
bewildering but certainly
disconcerting.

For Bombay Duck is not simply
the story of the ill-fated Ramayana
but also that of some of the

The work in question is Stream 's
version of the Hindu morality
stones know as the Ramayana,
Stream will mount the presenta-
tion with an international cast in
the fatally-flawed and grossly naive
belief that this unorthodow ap-
proach to the classic tales will
promote facial and spiritual har-
mony.

Not deterred by the drubbing
the play takes at the hands of Brit-
ish reviewers, Stream transports
the cast to strife-torn India. The
results are, in general, predictable

the most accurate met-
aphor for this country’s
population, with its diversity

of peoples, is not the MIKE nk? -.
melting pot envisaged by STEELE é =
philosopher statesmen of ares
bygone eras, but a tossed book review
salad.

The individual components are
not blended into 2 uniform whole

but remain more or less distinct,
imparting a flavor which is the

dramatic rending of the status quo.
Karim’s parents are on the verge

of divorce and Karim is torn be-

tween his mother’s reasserted

sum of its disparate parts rather
than the product of homogeneity.

Itis an uneasy alliance of many
ingredients as immigrants,
especially those whose customs,
color and language differ from
those of the majority, know only
too well,

While both novels reviewed this
week explore the immigrant expe-
rience as it is in Thatcher's intol-
erant and volatile England, the in-
sights they convey are more rele-
vant to our own land than we
might care to admit.

Hanif Kureishi is not a name
most of us would recognize, yet
two of the author's earlier books
won widespread critical acclaim as
films: Miv Beautiful Laundrette and
Sammy and Rasie Get Laid.

His latest novel, The Buddha of
Suburbia (Viking; 284 pp.;
$22.95). shares a similar theme:
the plight of a society wracked by
racial, religious, economic and
sexual turmoil as seen through the
eyes of those in the front lines of
social strife, the so-called ‘‘visible
minorities.”

The young man Kureishi has in-
vented as the central character of
this searing social commentary is
Karim Amir, son of an Indian fa-
ther and an English mother.

Suspended as he is between two

cultures, Karim epitomizes the
immigrant experience and the
ferment of a country undergoing a

Englishness and his father’s em-
barrassing emergence as a born-
again suburban guru.

Karim shifts from one side to the
other of his disintegrating family
while attempting to define a per-
sonal sense of place, direction and
identity.

If all of this sounds depressing,
it’s not, Whiie the story has its
dark sides, for the most part it’s a
bitingly funny send-up of societal
idiosyncrasies. Class, religion, pol-
itics, pop culture and even sex
roles are savaged mercilessly;
there are no sacred cows in The
Buddha of Suburbia.

The same can be said tor Bom-
bay Duck (Random House; 316
pp.; $29.50), but the pace and
style of this novel might be
described as bovine: somewhat
slow and given to attention-taxing
meandering. Still, it has its good
moments, fewer in number than
the reader might like, but enough
to warrant the attempt.

The primary voice is that of
West Indian-born Ali Abdul (an
alias he assumes to escape the in-
evitable ribbings inflicted by his
real name, the unfortunate Gerry
Blossom).

Ali is a struggling black actor
when he is rescued from obscure
Scottish venues by the noted
English director, David Stream,
and given the lead role in the lat-
ter’s new play.

Artist supports quake victims

DEEP COVE artist Ross Munro has
pledged his support to survivors of
the franian earthquake.

The local painter plans to donate
one-third of sales from a exhibit of
watercolors and oils to an approv-
ed relief fund in order to aid vic-
tims of the quake.

The show will be held at the
B.C. Club at the Plaza of Nations
on July 15 from noon to 6 p.m.

Corporate purchases will be 100
per cent tax deductible.

Munro’s landscapes — which
capture the brooding atmosphere
of the West Coast — are strong
and simple, employing subtle
washes of color accented with
lively calligraphic brush strokes.

For more information phone
929-8030.

to the reader,

A mob of outraged Hindu fun-
damentalists storm the set, intent
on killing the actors who have
defiled their religion. One dies,
another has his throat slit, proving
that some critiques are harsher

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