Gifted ~ Nikita Lalwani

This month's Bookworms' read was the first novel by Nikita Lalwani, Gifted. The book is the story of Rumi Vasi, a young Hindu girl growing up in Wales in the 1980s. Rumi's parents have come to Britain, immediately after their marriage so that her father, Mahesh, could complete his studies and gain his PhD. Mahesh has promised his wife, Shreene, that as soon as he has completed his thesis they will return to India, but this hasn't happened and so the opening of the book sees the family settled in Cardiff with Mahesh travelling each day to his post as a lecturer in Physics at Swansea.

Rumi has always been fascinated by numbers and one day her teacher accompanies her back to the family home to explain that the school think that she is 'gifted'. Despite the antagonism he feels towards the teacher, who he sees as interfering in his family life, this prompts Mahesh to take an even greater control over his daughter's development than he has done previously as she is groomed to become the youngest child ever to gain a place at Oxford to study Maths.  Initially compliant, as she reaches puberty, Rumi finds more and more ways of subverting her father's strictures. And, though she does make it to Oxford, the results are not what anyone in the family was expecting.

Unusually for Bookworms, we found ourselves discussing the issues raised by the book in greater depth than the book itself. In part, this was because we are mostly educators in one field or another and so the question of what is meant by a gifted child and what the implications are for the child so labelled was pertinent to us all. However, I think we also followed this line because we all felt that the book itself was typical of a first novel and flawed in many ways. To give just one example, while the ending is certainly not unexpected to the reader and is, in fact, based not only on an actual case but also reflective of Lalwani's own life (she dropped out of a medical degree at the end of the first year) it is unconvincing in the writing mainly because of problems with pace and the sudden switch of character focus.

We could, I think, have completely deconstructed the book had we focused just on the text itself and as a group we don't like doing that, so instead we found ourselves debating the difference between the concepts of gifted and talented and asking if it is ever to the child's ultimate advantage to be labelled as being gifted. It is clear in Rumi's case that while she may have a facility for numbers and for recognising patterns, she doesn't have the capacity for original thought that goes with real genius. We all felt, I think, that she would have been far better left to move through the education pathway at the same pace as her peers, broadening her understanding of the world outside Maths and then moving on to Oxford at a time when she had greater emotional maturity and could have handled the expectations that surround her more successfully.  Too many of us had horror stories to tell of children who had been pushed by their parents, beyond their physical, mental and emotional capabilities to the point where their health and in one cases their mind, had broken down completely.

We also spent time discussing the question of whether or not the first generation immigrant (whatever race or culture) isn't inclined to cling to traditions and social expectations long after the families they have left behind have moved on. Certainly, when Rumi and her mother return to India it is clear that their relatives there have a far less rigid approach to western influence than do Mahesh and Shreene and ultimately Rumi is damaged as much by the difference in cultural expectations as she is by the rigid regime of study.  Whatever we thought of the book, the reader can't help being sorry for this teenager who is caught in the double bind of having to meet the expectations of both a culture she doesn't understand and a label she doesn't want.

If Lalwani writes an second novel then I will read it, because I think she has some promise, but when, as a group we look back over our reading year, this book is one that we will remember for its subject matter rather than for the quality of the writing.


Annie

Bookworms

I've just added the reading schedules for our Wednesday evening book group, Bookworms, to the pages available on this blog. We started getting together over eight years ago now when a friend and I were looking for a group we could join, couldn't find one and so decided to form our own. If no one else is doing what you want then sort it out for yourself. It's the only way. I did the same thing last summer with literary summer schools and they worked as well as Bookworms has.

With only minor changes in personnel eight of us have met in each other's homes regularly once a month to discuss books chosen by the group members in rotation. We miss out August because, as several of us are teachers, we tend to be away then and in September we have a meeting with a difference, getting together for a whole day on the second Sunday and discussing a book in the morning, having a pot-luck lunch, then seeing the film of the book in the afternoon before finally discussing the adaptation over tea and cake. I have to say that only rarely have we had kind things to say about the films and some we have torn apart mercilessly. No one who had anything to do with the film version of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda would want to come within a hundred miles of us.

One of the best things about the group is the way in which our ability to discuss books has developed over the years. At first we were very tentative, even those of us who worked with literature for a living. Very often we had run out of things to say after half an hour or so. Now we have to call a halt to our discussion or we would go on all night and we all have to be up for work of one sort or another the following morning.

We don't always agree about the books chosen my any means. In fact the evening often goes with more of a swing when we don't. We had a very heated discussion of Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ just before Christmas, deeply divided, interestingly, not about the author's religious stance but about the worth of the book as a piece of literature. Other books, such as A S Byatt's The Children's Book, we all enjoy immensely but for very different reasons. And novels like that provide just as well for long and intense discussion.

I value Bookworms tremendously. I have been introduced to writers I might never otherwise have read and been forced to read others whom I have avoided for years only to find that they weren't so bad after all. After two false starts I finally managed to read Byatt's Possession and think what I would have missed if that hadn't been on the list. Above all though, I value it for the friendships that I have built. If any of the other Bookworms are reading this then thank you. You're the best.


Annie

Approaching George Eliot

For what, I am sure, seemed a very good reason at the time, I suggested as my next book club choice George Eliot's novel, Daniel Deronda. I'm fairly certain it was because I wanted the group to have to consider the position of the Jews in Victorian England, but why I should have thought that was either appropriate or desirable I can't for the life of me remember.

Well, that must have been at least twelve months ago and now that I'm within six weeks of the event and have started to turn my mind towards preparing for the discussion I've suddenly realised that I know almost nothing of any substance about Eliot nor have I read any of her works for at least thirty years. When I first discovered the author I worked my way through most of the major novels, although I'm fairly certain I've never read Adam Bede, but that was decades ago and the memories I'm left with are of the stories without any recollection of the social and political concerns that inhabit the narratives.

So, perhaps rather recklessly, given that I must also get back to my Titus Andronicus studies and start to tackle the new biography of Andrew Marvel, I've set myself the task of reading at least one critical work and rereading Middlemarch, before I take up Deronda itself. Too much, perhaps, but I've let my mind wallow in nothing but detective novels for the past couple of weeks and I'm beginning to feel mentally as fuggy as I feel physically after too much Christmas fare and I need something to get my literary teeth into. If I can do it it will be good preparation for the Books on the Nightstand discussion of War and Peace, for which I have ambitiously enrolled. I'd better look for some critical background on Tolstoy as well.


Annie