Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera bookends his memoir on life growing up in Wolverhampton with a letter he’s battling to write to his protective, ultra-traditional Punjabi mother. We don’t know what this letter contains, beyond the fact that it’s going to break her heart and it’s got Sanghera swigging neat vodka while he tries to write it. Good start.
What starts out as a memoir of growing up as a beloved younger son in a Punjabi family and then building a media life with white London friends as an adult soon zig-zags into family investigation. This isn’t a neatly arced story: we stumble across new developments with no real notice. Far from being an all-knowing observer dropped hints by Sanghera’s narration in some kind of Christmas Carol guided travel through his life, we come across things at the same time as he does, making it a far more accurate depiction of how surprises happen in real life. Bang! Surprise one. Bang! Surprise two. We flit from time to time (all held together easily, you don’t lose track) but you feel engaged rather than distanced. No Joanna Trolloping here.
And ah, the developments. Sorry to be a nuisance, but I’ rather not go into what some of the developments in Sanghera’s family are, partly because they’re not mentioned anywhere on the cover or in the reviews. The book would clearly like you to find out for yourself.
I will say that, while the family history Sanghera discovers is startling and frequently unsettling, this is far from being a “reboot of the misery memoir” as one of the reviews would claim. In fact, this is probably the most honest depiction of family life I’ve ever read, balanced and genuine, with things left unsaid rather than unveiled in great chapter-long confrontations.
Sanghera deserves huge credit (well, he wrote the thing, it’s fairly inevitable) for writing engagingly without being tempted by “-ising” his copy. No sentimalising, no eulogising, but still very funny and sympathetic. He’s both stern and forgiving of his younger self (who comes across – bless the past – as a marginally less un-self aware version of Adrian Mole), who – blessed with opportunities and strong parenting is left completely unaware of anything unusual in the family until the faintly staggering age of 24, and doesn’t follow it up until 30. It’s very rare to read of a discovery that doesn’t result in immediate confrontation, and refreshing – as any fule kno, life doesn’t work that way all the time.
The book’s cover makes it sound half-way between wacky East Is East/Bend It Like Beckham awakening-cum-wacky 80s memoir. It’s partly that, but this isn’t yet another eye rolling memoir offering a childhood up on a plate for us to giggle over and dispose of afterwards. Sanghera’s book is something that we all need: a memoir that depicts life and all the knotty sub-plots and quiet revelations that come along the way honestly, wittily and as naturally as you’ll get without going through it yourself.
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