The Things That We Lost

Written By Linda Malek

The Things That We Lost by Jyoti Patel

Reviewed by Linda
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Thank you to @merkybooks for this copy!

This story zooms in on a mother-son relationship strained by the impact of grief, silence, and unspoken family history.
This debut author has poured so much into this novel; the emotion is palpable and Jyoti Patel is one to watch.
19 years on from a freak accident, Avani still struggles to process the loss of her late husband, Elliot, and her son Nikhil grows up with a primitive understanding of his father. So many questions run through Avani's mind - could Elliot's death have been avoided? And just how does she communicate with her son? It takes a long time for Avani and Nik to sing from the same hymn sheet, the entire book in fact. Nik spends months guessing and half-forming theories whilst Avani bites her tongue hoping her son will tire of asking. Although Avani is doing what she believes is best, Nik is molly-coddled, and it's frustrating watching Nik try and make sense of the generational trauma passed down to him but you will be invested.

With the sudden loss of his grandfather and only remaining father figure, Nik becomes completely uprooted and spirals. Unexpectedly, his grandfather's death unlocks a passage in history for Nik to find more about his father much to his mother's distress.

The novel goes back in time to Avani's upbringing in Harrow, the innocent childhood friendship she had with Elliot whilst suffering abuse from her mother and becoming estranged from her brother, Chand. The author depicts a British/Gujarati/Kenyan family steeped in culture with a love for food, music, and London. Fast forward in time, and Nik holds all these things dear forcing him to consider his place in an all-white northern university town away from everything he knows. The standout character for me was the grandfather, written with so much affection and thought.
A very moving debut. If you enjoyed Things We Do Not Tell by Huma Qureshi and Hope & Glory by Jendella Benson, I think you will enjoy this.

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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The Heron’s Cry