Bitter Sweets - Roopa Farooki

I suspect that there are few people who have never lied, even if it is *only* to keep the peace or to protect someone's feelings. I wonder, would we be less likely to tell those lies if we took a moment to think through the possible consequences first.

In Roopa Farooki's "Bitter Sweets" one lie filters down and has a profound impact on the lives of three generations of a family. When he spots an opportunity to make a potentially ...
...a deception that will have far-reaching consequences. He persuades Henna to pretend to be someone who is not in order to win the affection of Ricky-Rashid, the son of a wealthy merchant. Only on his wedding night does Ricky discover that he has been duped; his wife is not seventeen, she is thirteen and far from being the intellectual equal he'd been led to believe, Henna is barely literate. Rather than risk bringing shame upon the family, the decption ... more

I suspect that there are few people who have never lied, even if it is *only* to keep the peace or to protect someone's feelings. I wonder, would we be less likely to tell those lies if we took a moment to think through the possible consequences first.

In Roopa Farooki's "Bitter Sweets" one lie filters down and has a profound impact on the lives of three generations of a family. When he spots an opportunity to make a potentially lucrative match for his daughter, Henna's father sets in motion a deception that will have far-reaching consequences. He persuades Henna to pretend to be someone who is not in order to win the affection of Ricky-Rashid, the son of a wealthy merchant. Only on his wedding night does Ricky discover that he has been duped; his wife is not seventeen, she is thirteen and far from being the intellectual equal he'd been led to believe, Henna is barely literate. Rather than risk bringing shame upon the family, the decption is kept secret: Henna is educated at home and does not become a "real wife" to Ricky until he returns to India after university in the UK. Not long after he returns, financial difficulties force the family to move to Pakistan.

Their daughter, Shona, spends her childhood saying what she thinks other people want to hear. She hasn't had a very good example from those around her so lying comes almost instinctively to her. As a young woman Shona continues to lie, now it's to conceal her relationship with Parvez, a young Pakistani of whom she knows her parents don't approve. When Parvez suggests they should marry then run away to London, where his uncle has a sweet shop, in order to be together, Shona isn't totally convinced it's the right thing to do but loves Parvez so much she can't tell him the truth and so she agrees to the plan. The couple start their married life in tough circumstances but believe their love will see them through but when they find it impossible to conceive things become strained.

Out of the blue Ricky gets the opportunity of a job in London, something he's wanted ever since he was a student in the UK; for him it's the ultimate way of saying he has made it. On the way to London for his interview he meets Verity who seems to be the wife he always wanted. Of course, Ricky is a married man, even if he is stuck in an unhappy marriage and his wife is thousands of miles away; he starts to tell Verity his story, with some major omissions. But, cautiously reconciled with his daughter, Ricky is in a precarious position and this is compounded when Shona comes to his London flat and offers to make it more homely. Believing that Shona has discovered his secret, Ricky agrees to Shona's request for a large sum of money with which he believes he is buying her silence. But the money is to pay for the fertility treatment that eventually blesses Parvez and Shona with twin boys who the couple name Omar and Shariff. With their family complete and life going well for Parvez and Shona everything looks rosy until long forgotten lies threaten to tear the family apart.

At first I was unsure what to make of this novel. The story opens in India and decribes in almost fairytale fashion how Henna and her father tricked Ricky into marriage and how Ricky discovered that Henna was not the woman he thought she was. I like this kind of magical realism (think Joanne Harris or Lily Prior) but it wasn't the right style to use in this novel and certainly not for just a short section of the book. India is real, why should it be portrayed in this almost fictional fashion, it may be far away for many readers but describing it in this way was plain silly and jarred with the rest of the writing. In this respect I found it very like the opening section of Monica Ali's "Brick Lane" which also has a fairytale feel to it when the central character recalls her childhood in Pakistan.

The success of the characterisation was mixed; I couldn't bear Shona and Parvez and their awful habit of calling each other "Goldie" and "Puppy". It made them laughable and did nothing for their credibility. The characters of Shona's parents were much more interesting and believable. I loved the depiction of Ricky as this long-suffering man who patiently bore his lot until he found Verity. In spite of what he does it's easy to feel sympathetic towards Ricky, not least because of his (brilliantly) awful and self-centred wife. I could gripe and say that the portrait of Henna veers a bit too much towards the comical and risks losing credibility but at least it made these two characters far more interesting than Parvez and Shona. The problem, in my opinion, is more to do with a lack of consistency in the style of the story than with poor characterisation. Was the novel intended to be humorous? I don't think Roopa Farooki could decide what she really intended it to be which confused me. The grown up Omar and Shariff (again this choice of names was mildly amusing but the humour was lost in a sea of drama) are interesting characters but hardly anything new within the realms of British Asian fiction and, for the most part, the situations the characters were in were unoriginal too.

This is incidental though; the story really hinges on the telling of lies, or the omission of the truth, and this turns out to be quite thought-provoking. The reader knows some of the lies that affect that story but not all of them. Furthermore, some of the characters think they know the truth but are mistaken. The narration alternates between characters a chapter at a time and I liked the chapter titles which explained who was narrating with a comic aside. Since the plot is quite a tangled web it made sense that the narration should be shared among the characters as this emphasises the different viewpoints and experiences of the characters. There were a few minor twists that I really hadn't expected; I was expecting the story to culminate in the discovery of certain untruths but those that materialised were new to me even though I'd had an insight into the minds of all of the characters.

I was impressed that Roopa Farooki avoided going down the familiar root of focusing on the experience of Asian immigrants in London in the late 1970s, early 1980s which I think has been explored sufficiently by authors such as Monica Ali and Zadie Smith. Instead, she looks at the experiences of first generation British Asians not just in terms of racist attitudes from others but also the expectations of the parents of young British Asians and for themselves. The hugely different choices made by Omar and Shariff explored this idea well.

Once Roopa Farooki has left the magical realist style behind the story picked up quite quickly. There are the obvious problems with the characters but the story is well-constructed and it is to the author's credit that the story does not become too complicated. However, there is the danger that in keeping things simple, important parts of the story get forgotten about and of this Roopa Farooki is certainly guilty. We learn the fine details of Shona's experience and how she adapts to life in a new country but little of how Parvez manages. We also know a lot about Ricky, but Verity fades into the background quite quickly and I found this disappointing as I thought she was a good character who could have played an interesting part in the story. On top of all this the story tends towards the end to acquire soap opera proportions as we have an overload of dramatic incident that has you asking yourself whether it isn't stretching the bounds of the imagination to believe that all this could happen to one family.

Still, for all it's faults this is a decent enough read; not too challenging and fairly entertaining, perhaps a good beach book. I wouldn't race to read another novel by Roopa Farooki, I like novels with a bit more gravity myself and found "Bitter Sweets" a bit lightweight. I would hesitate to recommend it to those who have enjoyed Monica Ali or Zadie Smith, there are obvious comparisons but this comes nowhere those authors. Recommended as non-challenging but vaguely thought-provoking chick-lit.

300 pages

 

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