Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19045 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 345 pages

Synopsis
Jamal is a successful psychoanalyst haunted by his first love and a brutal act of violence from which he can never escape. Looking back to his coming of age in the 1970s forms a vivid backdrop to the drama that develops thirty years later, as he and his friends face an encroaching middle age with the traumas of their youth still unresolved. Like "The Buddha of Suburbia", "Something to Tell You" is full-to-bursting with energy, at times comic, at times painfully tender. With unfailing deftness of touch Kureishi has created a memorable cast of recognisable individuals, all of whom wrestle with their own limits as human beings, haunted by the past until they find it within themselves to forgive.

Customer Reviews

What's new? - not a lot.
Sadly this seems to me an oh-too familiar depiction of Kureishi characters, bohemiam intellectuals, disparate deadbeats, immigrant maunderings, and all else in between; throw in some sexual deviancy of the bum variety toking on an ample supply of drugs, a few philosophical qoutes, long-winded expostion that completely loses the reader in terms on interest, and one wonders what really is the point? From the slide of Gabriel's Gift it's hard to see a way back for Kureishi - this from a fan who's read it all, and will probably stop from here on in; or, perhaps, read his old stuff, it'll amount to the same either way. To write well about one's heritage, culture, set in a postmodernist melting pot, one needs more than wowee! strange characters laboriously described via a psychological A-Z of deviancy and psychosis. One needs to be able to write as well as Philip Roth or Saul Bellow; Kureishi will be the first to admit he could and never will live up to either. The question is, what he will live up to if not the same old glories regurgitated.

Fascinating yet unconvincing
I was so much looking forward to reading this book. After all, it was Hanif Kureishi and the main character, Jamal, is a psychoanalyst with a secret. However, although I quite enjoyed the story and the writing style, I was disappointed by the gaps in the novel that left me wondering if I had missed some explanation or important information. If we, as the readers, are supposed to understand better what Jamal is all about by focusing on what J chooses to leave out of his story then somehow this was lost on me. It was, though, a fascinating account of a world of drugs, intellectuals, celebrities so I would recommend this book to anyone who is drawn to a read set against this backdrop.

Gentrification of the fetish scene..?
I'm thoroughly enjoying this novel.
The characters are well observed and believable, as is the London they all inhabit - despite an error regarding the location of the Astoria. Only Michael Bracewell can really challenge this author when it comes to observing and commenting upon the social and cultural circuitry of London life '...unless you had cachet, social progress in London could be slow, painful and futile.' Indeed, the culture/class clash at the centre of the action is what keeps things interesting and fresh in this novel.

The first novel to detect and comment upon the Bizarre magazine/Torture Garden-instigated gentrification of the fetish scene that seems to be occuring right now?