Debut novel examines Indian immigrant experience
Debut novel about Indian immigrant family's problems and secrets evokes mirth and tears, writes Bron Sibree
Mira Jacob's beguiling and darkly comic debut novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing has already drawn early comparisons with the work of literary superstar Jhumpa Lahiri.
Both write about the immigrant Indian experience in America and both deal expertly in family dysfunction. But that's where the comparison ends.
Unlike Lahiri, who is particularly adroit at evoking the underlying unhappiness of her Bengali characters in plain, unadorned prose, Jacob's account of a south Indian family and the generational struggle between new and old-world beliefs dances rather more lyrically between comedy and tragedy, between the mundanity of everyday family life and a rambunctious, messy vitality.
The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing is that rare novel that manages to evoke mirth and tears simultaneously. Unfolding through the gaze of the ever-watchful Amina Eapen, a 30-year-old wedding photographer living in Seattle, the tale thrusts the reader into the exuberant, messy lives of the Eapen family within the space of a few paragraphs.
It opens in Seattle in June 1998, when Amina receives a call from her mother, Kamala, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to say all is not well with her father, Thomas, a respected neurosurgeon who, while sitting on the porch after work late at night, appears to be talking to Amina's grandmother, Ammachy, who has been dead for almost 20 years. Despite the demands of her busy job and the knowledge that her mother is prone to exaggeration, Amina flies home to find out for herself what, if anything, is wrong with her father.
Jacob takes the reader by the hand and effortlessly, skilfully, leads them ever deeper into this irreverent and deeply engaging story of grief and loss, despair and optimism, love, longing and family secrets.