Gurnaik Johal - We Move

Gurnaik Johal - We Move 

2.5 ⭐

Genre: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Domestic Fiction

Pages: 240

Format:  eARC on NetGalley 

Publisher: Serpent's Tail / Viper / Profile Books

Date Published: 7th April 2022 

Big thank you to Serpent's Tail/ Viper/ Profile Books and NetGalley for the eARC .

Book Blurb: 

Here, beneath the planes circling Heathrow, various lives connect. Priti speaks English and her nani Punjabi. Without Priti's mum around they struggle to make a shared language. Not far away, Chetan and Aanshi's relationship shifts when a woman leaves her car in their drive but never returns to collect it. Gujan's baba steps out of his flat above the chicken shop for the first time in years to take his grandson on a bicycle tour of the old and changed neighbourhood. And returning home after dropping out of university, Lata grapples with a secret about her estranged family friend, now a chart-topping rapper in a crisis of confidence. 

Mapping an area of West London, these stories chart a wider narrative about the movement of multiple generations of immigrants. In acts of startling imagination, Gurnaik Johal's debut brings together the past and the present, the local and the global, to show the surprising ways we come together.

My Review: 

Honestly, when I read the description of this book, it sounded like something I would love to read, a book that I usually go for. Once I read it, I enjoyed reading it but I can’t say I loved it or that it lived up to my expectations.

This book contains 17 short stories, that are all set in the same neighbourhood in London. The stories follow different people but some have overlapping characters. Some characters and their stories intertwine with each other, too.

Through these short stories, I learned quite a lot about the British South Asian Community, their traditions, culture, and past, present and future hopes.

There were quite a few stories that I loved and got so engrossed in them, that I wished it was more to those stories and the characters. I wished that some of the characters had their books, so I can read more about them and their stories and lives. Those stories were also beautifully written, with characters so real, that it felt you are there with them, feeling what they are feeling.

However, quite a few stories were hard to read and felt without a purpose in between the more moving stories. At times I had to put the book down as I wasn’t following or understanding the purpose of those few stories. For me, they felt a bit out of place in this book. 

Overall, for me, this book was not my cup of tea, although I loved some of the stories, the other ones made this book a bit less appealing for me. Nevertheless, this book is a great read if you want something short in between longer books or if you just want something easy to read.  Also, I do recommend it if you want to learn more about the British South Asian community and their lives in the UK. 

This review was first published on NetGalley and can be found on: 

https://www.netgalley.co.uk/book/246140/review/959200

About an Author: 

Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London born in 1998. He was shortlisted for The Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize in 2018 and graduated from The University of Manchester in 2019. He works in children's publishing. 

https://twitter.com/@GurnaikJohal