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.
At secondary school, Avani’s brother’s bike is scratched with racist slurs. Pointing to the union jack, he warns Avani that “that’s their flag” – she should lay low when she spots it. When Nik goes to university in a northern town, he’s introduced as Nik, “who wants it to be clear he’s from Harrow, not Pakistan”. He finds that “it had stayed with him, this othering, lingering around him like a persistent headache all the way down to London”. He soon learns the difference between patriotism and nationalism, feels the weight of the white gaze.
For all this othering, there’s also an embracing, as Patel’s characters celebrate Gujarati culture and community, their hyphenated heritage. Untranslated Gujarati words and phrases appear as frequently as British teenage slang. In due course, Nik comes to terms with being Indian in the only way he knows – “in his ability to speak Gujarati, badly, in his love of the stories from the Mahabharata that his grandfather recited to him on their walks home from school, his addiction to jalebi and rasmalai, or in the box he ticks when he has to fill in a form: Mixed – White + Asian, like some reductive equation”.
When Avani’s husband died, she couldn’t find the right words “simply because there were too many languages in her head: Gujarati, a pinch of Swahili from her parents’ time in Kenya, some French from school, English, of course”. Pregnant with Nik, she was gripped by sadness and guilt – and over time, she “threw her grief inwards” and built an impenetrable wall around herself, refusing to let her father, brother or son in. The key Nik inherits, and a dark green BMW gathering dust in a garage, become the stepping stones that lead him back to his drifting mother. Truths are gradually exposed, in a story that’s intricately woven and immersive.
This is a big book, full of assured and affecting writing. Secrets spill and relationships sour, sacrifices are made and promises are broken, as plot twists propel the narrative forward to a dramatic finale. Like Nik, the reader is on a quest for the truth: what really happened to Nik’s father?
“Big or small, there’s always a secret in death’s wake,” Avani says. Towards the end of the novel, Nik, who has felt betrayed by his mother’s distance throughout his childhood, realises that the “territorial nature” of her grief was intended to shield her son from the “pain lying in truth’s wake”. The Things That We Lost asks: can the truth hurt us, or set us free? And should some secrets remain padlocked for ever?
• The Things That We Lost is published by Merky (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
