Guy GunaratneReseñas

Set in London, this book follows five characters: Three friends (Yusuf, Selvon, and Ardan) and two of their parents (Caroline and Nelson). Each of them relates the tale in the first person with alternating chapters. The friends, each from different backgrounds, are bonding by football (soccer to us U.S. folks) and music. Each is facing serious familial challenges that further bind them together. An incident where an Islamic young man murders a soldier has set off a spate of escalating riots and racial tensions.

First, let me say that even though I didn't personally love this book, I am very surprised it wasn't shortlisted for the Man Booker. I read four of the shortlisted titles, and I think this book is more innovative and powerful (and frankly, interesting) than any of the four I read.

Putting that to the side, I will say that I felt the book took its time getting its footing. For the first half, I had two issues. Each person speaks in their own vernacular, and honestly I find it exhausting to try to decipher these dialects while following the story. None of them were especially hard (the Milkman it was not), and I do think it was a defensible choice . . .but what it really meant was that I took about a third of the book to really find my reading rhythm.

The latter half was excellent. Characters begin to truly reveal themselves and there were some plot points that had me gasping. I thought it was very clever of the author to demonstrate how violence escalates on the basis of untruths and innuendo. But he also had hopeful moments and left the door open for happiness for some of the characters. It was an excellent balance, and when I closed the book, I was satisfied and happy I had read it. This book is a debut novel, so I expect to see great things from this author going forward.

I won an ARC edition in a GOODREADS giveaway.

This book tells the story of two days on a South London housing estate, as tensions rise in the summer heat after the Islamist-inspired murder of a soldier on a nearby street. What happens is told through the eyes of five narrators, three young men (Selvon, Ardan and Yusuf) and two older characters, Nelson and Caroline, who counterpoint the modern story, thinking about tensions and conflicts from different places and times (Nelson, from the Windrush generation, remembers Teddy boys and Enoch Powell - Caroline is from an IRA family who made her move to London for her own safety after they started a feud with soldiers from a nearby base).

The male characters' chapters are read by Ben Bailey Smith, aka rapper Doc Brown, who is brilliant at capturing the swing and rhythm of the prose. And that's the best thing about this book, along with the well-observed little details of everyday life for the young men, and the way that the different tribes on the estate form and mix. All of that I thought was great.

What worked less well for me was the overall story - I guess you need some 'drama' in the book but I would have been happy to follow these guys across the course of a normal week (or year) and I think a good writer can do a lot with apparently trivial ups and downs. Also, the character of Caroline seems to be there because otherwise the story wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. Full marks to Gunaratne for recognising that his narrative was short on a female perspective, but Caroline just is not convincing as a character, particularly compared to how real the other narrators feel.

Despite these critiques, I do think the book is worth reading and would particularly recommend listening to the audiobook.½

It was supposed to be like every summer they could remember, hanging out, football, freedom and music. But an off duty soldier has just been murdered and the tension in the air is palpable. The anger in the area is spilling over into riots. Selvon and Ardan are wary of what is going on around them, but their friend, Yusuf, is starting to get caught up in the rise of radicalism in his own mosque. Worryingly, his brother is falling for the rhetoric from the Imam. Watching from the sidelines are the emigres, Caroline from Ireland and Nelson from West India. They and their children, Arden an aspiring rapper and Selvon who is trying to run his way out of the estate.

The bonds that have been forged between the youngsters as they played football and grew up together are going to be stretched to the maximum as the tension builds in the community. A march has been arranged by a right-wing group through the estate, something is going to snap soon, who will survive the coming maelstrom.

Gunaratne’s debut novel has drawn on recent and past events from London’s story of immigration and inner-city estates and is both raw and simmering with tension. It pulses with the language from the street, which did take a while to get the hang of, but added authenticity that fits the backdrop perfectly. Setting the plot over the course of two days works really well too, the pace is relentless with short chapters as the story is told from multiple perspectives. He holds a mirror up to recent events, not to criticise our modern society, but to ask searching questions about why the tensions are there in the first place. Well worth reading as a sparkling contemporary novel.

This book buzzes with energy and street slang. The 3 main young characters come from different cultural backgrounds and as they reach adulthood these differences are becoming more important, to the world around them if not to them. We also get some back story of their parents which gives some context on how London has gained its cultural mix, and how racism has always been present alongside it. I'm not sure it's entirely successful, but its a good and thought-provoking read, which gives a voice to marginalised groups, and feels very timely.½

A few bits of slang do not a brilliant London book make, ennet. There are a couple of sharp points (such as where second-generation migrants fit in when it’s native racists versus foreigners) but the story fails to push through fully on anything it touches upon. Oh, and the writing is all over the place, with the ‘yoot’ passages particularly unconvincing. A let-down.

Winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prise, and nominated for the Booker and the Goldsmiths, In Our Mad and Furious City is deeply depressing reading if you love London as I do. It is the story of three youths negotiating the rise in anti-Islamic tension that follows the slaughter of a returned soldier on the streets of London, an event reminiscent of the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013. Ardan, Selvon* and Yusuf are London-born teenagers of immigrant heritage: Ardan is of Ulster Catholic background; Selvon's parents came postwar from Monserrat in the Caribbean; and Yusuf and his troubled brother Irfan are sons of the recently deceased imam, who has been replaced by a hardline fundamentalist encouraging radical Islamism and enforcing Islamic dress code with his own personal gang of bullies aligning themselves with the Muhajiroun.

The London that I know is the London tourists know, and the nostalgic London of my childhood: a quiet suburban street in Rickmansworth where I danced the Maypole at a village fair; watching fireworks from the roof garden of a flat in Chelsea; and feeding the ducks with my grandfather at Queens Park in Kilburn. That's not the 'real' London, any more than any part of Melbourne can be said to be the 'real' Melbourne. But it's not the grime, grit and hopelessness of Gunaratne's London that depresses me. There are pockets of disadvantage in cities the world over, and none of that is going to change unless people get over their disenchantment with politics, and in sufficient numbers join or form parties that offer an alternative to existing policies that perpetuate inequality. No, what depresses me is the deeply divided nature of the city depicted by Gunaratne, a situation described just this weekend in 'Britain is in the grip of an existential crisis that reaches far beyond Brexit' by Aditya Chakrabortty at The Guardian. (If you want any proof that the Queen is a useless figurehead, it's her failure to unify the British people in the face of this crisis).

In Our Mad and Furious City takes place over 48 hours, in which the boys go from playing football with a bunch of other kids from all over (immigrants from Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and Ireland) to being sucked into the violence of a riot between Islamists and White Supremacists. The story is narrated by five voices: Yusuf, Ardan and Selvan, plus Ardan's alcoholic mother Caroline and Selvan's father Nelson, profoundly disabled by a stroke. Yusuf's mother doesn't have a voice and is barely a presence because she has been crushed not only by the death of her husband in a car accident but also by the shame of her son Irfan's #NoSpoilers immoral behaviour. But her husband's voice, treasured in Yusuf's memory, is the voice of the moderate imam who kept the radicals at bay. Yusuf hears his father quoting parts of the Qur'an that suit the message of tolerance and peace.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/05/30/in-our-mad-and-furious-city-by-guy-gunaratne...

This is an ambitious debut novel, polyvocal and steeped in different dialects, slang, and patois. There are five POV characters and the chapters alternate among them. The reader is thrust into a London setting that isn't likely to be familiar to most: a housing estate in Neasden. We read the internal monologues of two middle-aged characters, Caroline from Northern Ireland and Nelson from Monserrat, and three young men: Ardan, Selvon, and Yusuf (we also read brief chapters from Yusuf's brother Irfan's perspective). We know that the three are friends, but their relationships to the older characters are revealed more slowly.

From the title and the prologue it is clear that the novel will be building toward something that is violent, and both the background chapters and the present-day setting lay the groundwork for that. Ardan, Selvon, and Yusuf are all caught up in the group conflict and small-scale violence that characterizes their neighborhood, try as they might to avoid it. Selvon runs and trains, Ardan makes street music, and Yusuf tries to navigate between his friends and his Muslim community. All of these are difficult because no one in the area can escape the "which side are you on" question, no matter how hard they may try.

Much of the novel is taken up with the rotating perspectives of the characters, and we see events from multiple points of view. Over time we get a rich sense of this world and how they navigate it, but for readers who want plot, there isn't much until the end. The story definitely builds over time, and it's quite carefully constructed, but when the inevitable climactic scenes occur, they take place very rapidly and the book basically ends.

Gunaratne does an admirable job with the different patterns of speech, although it can be disconcerting to switch from one to another. Caroline is perhaps the least convincing, but that could be because I had just finished Anna Burns' Milkman and that set such a high bar. Nevertheless, the register changes, which also have to include generational shifts, are mostly very effective.

Yusuf's storyline provides the fulcrum, and while this makes sense within the context of the novel, he is a character to whom things happen rather than one who acts. As a result, his and his family's story feels the most familiar and the least intrinsically motivated. By contrast, Ardan's and Selvon's trajectories are more interesting and their interactions with the previous generations feel thicker and more nuanced.

The final scenes, where the violence comes to a head, are well done, as are the smaller flashpoints that precede and shape them. The novel captures the way in which violence can shape so many aspects of personal and impersonal relationships in distressed communities, and how hard it is to avoid or overcome.

Ambitious and aggressive. I enjoyed it. Should read it again.

This is another timely book from the Booker longlist. Centered around a government housing project and three young men. When anti-Muslim protestors threaten their neighborhood, the consequences are severe for one of them. Also interspersed are narratives from two older individuals who have faced similar issues in the past. I admired the way the author was able to make each character’s voice distinct. Not an optimistic book, but good observations about the way history and violence repeat.

Sometimes multi-voiced narratives don't work - but once you get into how the five main characters speak, this novel is fantastic! Coulda been shortlisted for the Booker, but missed out. Full review here: http://annabookbel.net/our-mad-furious-city-guy-gunaratne½