In Jyoti Patel’s searching debut novel, there are things Nik knows and things he doesn’t. He is Indian, but he doesn’t know India; it’s not his home, not really. Growing up in a British-Kenyan-Gujarati household in Harrow, London, he notes the difference between being asked where he’s from by someone who is brown or Black, and someone who is white. “The former rings of solidarity, allyship, while the latter of othering, of suspicion.” His identity, he realises, “is like a pair of scales; the weight of the answer depending on the intention of the person asking”. Yet it’s not his own identity but his family history about which Nik seeks answers. And when his grandfather dies, leaving him with a key – literally – to the well-guarded secrets of his parents’ past, including his father’s sudden death, it’s the prompt for a long-grieving and unraveling family to find some semblance of closure.
So this is both a mystery story and a coming-of-age tale, narrated from the dual perspectives of mother and son, Avani and 18-year-old Nik. The Things That We Lost travels back and forth between Avani’s adolescent years as a British Indian in 1980s London, and Nik’s experiences as a mixed-race young man in post-Brexit Britain. Decades apart, their experiences are mirrored: not much has changed in the racial prejudice they encounter.
