Book Review: Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi’s latest novel Something to Tell You follows the first person musings of Jamal Karim, a psychoanalyst who is in the late stages of mid-life. Jamal has a secret, and seems to have reached a point where the secret has reached its nexus, and he either must face it, or collapse. The language of the book is confident, and often rich, reflecting the insular nature of the protagonist, and the setting is full of the vibrancy of the period in which this book moves: from Jamal’s past in the mid-1970s to today. There is a tremendous amount of detail, and a living record of the trends, books, theories, and gadgets that make up the modern world as we knew, and know it, and it’s reasonably fast-paced, despite the paralysis that takes over the narrator. But throughout the book is an unsettling superficiality which jars with the fact that the narrative itself gets forward motion from the thoughts and recollections of Jamal.

As with Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, or John Irving’s Until I Find You, the novel is weighed down by an almost constant and in a way, irrelevant, plethora of namedropping. From the psychoanalysts who inspire Jamal: "Freud, Lacan, Laing", to book titles sprinkled at random through the text, authors ("Sade, Beardley, Hugh Hefner"), albums, performers ("Roy Orbison, Dusty Springfield"), and political rulers are all listed, with little reason other than to demonstrate popular culture. Worse though are the real life characters that keep popping into the story - Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Kate Moss, Tom Stoppard, Marianne Faithfull, or Eric Cantona, an ex-Manchester United football player, and a range of other "names" are all woven into the storyline, having lunch, therapy, or being introduced to people.

It’s easy to imagine that Kureishi’s intent here was to provide a sense of the era, and the immediate colour that these characters conjure, but instead these dropped-in names turns the book into a compendium of the times and detracts from both the character development and the fictive dream. Each time it happens: “Tom Stoppard, an acquantainence of Henry’s, had suggested Henry might enjoy Mick.” (153) it drags the reader out of an already thin story and further dilutes the believability, since each of the mentioned celebrities are full scale complex characters in real life but cardboard cutouts in this novel.

Jamal talks us through the story, and provides analyses of what he sees, but we never feel it, either from Jamal, or from the supporting characters, who, like Jamal, come across as superficial, unpleasant, and self-obsessed. There’s Miriam, Jamal’s wild single mother sister, who introduces his theatre director friend Henry to group sex:

'He fucks the women, but he always comes in me. That’s the rule. He’s mine and he bloody well know it, otherwise I’ll tattoo my name onto his arse myself.' She said. ‘Jamal, I’m warning you, if anyone annoys me today, I’m in one of my moods, they’re gonna get it, okay?' (281)

Article Author: Maggie Ball

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of Sleep Before Evening, The Art of Assessment, Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse and She Wore Emerald Then. …

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