TELL ME HOW TO BE

After his father’s death, Akash Amin returns home and struggles with secrets and sobriety.

The debut novel by Patel, author of the acclaimed story collection If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi (2018), continues his exploration of Indian American characters who fight against stereotypes and the expectations of others. Akash wants to live in LA and produce the kind of R&B records he grew up listening to in the 1990s, but his alcoholism and bad decisions keep getting in the way of his dreams. He flies home for the puja commemorating his father’s death one year earlier and faces a brother and mother who don’t know he’s gay and who still resent him for causing a drunken scene the night of his brother’s wedding. Renu, Akash’s mother, has spent the year since her husband’s death watching American soap operas, drinking wine, and holding her tongue at the constant microaggressions from so many supposedly well-meaning White friends. Renu has decided to move back to London, where the man she almost married still lives. No one knows about Renu’s secret desire, but she spends the puja thinking about this lost chance at love. At the same time, Akash can’t stop thinking about the first boy who broke his heart back in middle school and who still lives in town. The novel’s power comes from watching a mother and son suffer under such similar burdens while stubbornly refusing to open up to each other. The flaw in Patel’s novel is structural more than anything else. The short chapters (some as few as two pages) alternate between Akash’s and Renu’s narration; they wrestle with such similar burdens, and they’re together for so much of the book, that the quick jumps between them keep the reader from sinking into either of their stories.

Strong characters and a sharp depiction of familial secrets in a novel that feels too compressed.