I moved Gifted to the top of my reading pile after it was put on the Man Booker long list this week. Now that I’ve read it, I can see why it was long-listed, but I am unsure if I like the book or agree with the status the literati have accorded it.
In addition to being a novel about a gifted child coming of age, Lalwani’s novel is also a novel of Indian people in the west. Rumika Rumi
Vasi is the gifted girl. Her parents are Mahesh and Shreene. Her younger brother is Nibu. Mahesh and Shreene live precariously between the worlds of India and Britain. Rumi is much more firmly drawn to the West in which she lived (Cardiff, Wales), but her parents sequester her from everything to the best of their ability. Rumi doesn’t know any better than to follow along with her father’s desire for her to be admitted to Oxford at a young age, but she’s also clearly unhappy with the strictures with which he ties her down. She makes it to Oxford at age 15, but the pressure only increases on her.
Lalwani’s writing is generally good, but I found it to be choppy. It’s less a story than a series of vignettes. While the factual details
of the story weren’t particularly important, I still found my immersion into Rumi’s character displaced by new things introduced in each vignette.
The writing does emphasize how isolated Rumi is. There are three characters in the book: Rumi, Mahesh, Shreene. Well, and one half character, Mark Whitefoot, a college buddy of Mahesh’s who stops by once per month to play chess with Mahesh. Everyone else is merely setting. Anyone Rumi could bond with is forced away from her one way or another, usually by the chapter after they are introduced. It’s an incredibly warped view of the world to grow up with. I got the feeling that Rumi was a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
I felt very badly for Rumi throughout the book and wanted to strangle and slap around Mahesh and Shreene. The world is not as it was when you were a child, and the methods your parents used with you probably weren’t even appropriate then!
And yet, when Lalwani delves into scenes from Shreene and Mahesh’s point of view, it’s incredibly clear that they aren’t evil people. They are Frankenstein monsters themselves. I pitied them, despite my anger at them.
I think a book worth reading, but in some ways because of how Lalwani ends the novel generally, though I have a beef with the very last scene. But no spoilers here since the book is barely out, so write me if you want to know that beef.
Title: Gifted
Award: 2008 Desmond Elliott Prize
Author: Nikita Lalwani
Imprint / publisher: Random House
Format: Advance readers copy
Length: 276 p.
Publication date: September 2007
ISBN-10: 1-4000-6648-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-4000-6648-3
Subject: Gifted girls — Fiction
Subject: Mathematics — Fiction
Subject: Immigrants — Wales — Fiction
Subject: East Indians — Wales — Fiction
Subject: Children of immigrants — Family relationships — Wales — Fiction
Subject: Culture conflict — Fiction
Subject: Cardiff (Wales) — Fiction
LC classification: PR6112.A49 G54 2007
