"Shot-through with love and courage, this page-turner of a debut brims with moving truths about grief, identity, family relationships, and “where are you really from?” racism."
At once a moving, immersive exploration of grief and the complex truths behind family relationships and behaviours, Jyoti Patel’s The Things That We Lost debut also packs punch as an emotional page-turner.
Nik knows not to ask his mother about his dad, or his estranged stepfather. Alongside refusing to speak of them, she’s also buried secrets about her own troubled upbringing. But when her father dies, Nik seizes an opportunity to dig into the past. Struggling at university away from home in a white-majority town, and struggling with the omnipresence of grief for his grandfather (“When it isn’t howling in the night, it’s gently tugging at his sleeve, reminding him it’s there, exercising its right to his attention”), Nik uncovers uncomfortable truths that eventually lead him back to his mother with greater understanding and love.
Achingly beautiful in its portrayal of how we protect the ones we love, the novel is also outstanding on Nik’s identity as a Briton of Indian heritage, subjected to “Where are you really from?” interrogations that result in him experiencing his identity “like a pair of scales; the weight of the answer depending on the intention of the person asking.”
| Primary Genre | Literary Fiction |
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