A timely, finely-wrought novel about people living in the margins, relying on people who are more likely to harm than help. Lalwani’s close and accurate observations of the tiny shifts in feeling that persuade you to trust, when everything tells you not to, is masterly.
Tuli, of Sri Lankan descent himself, is the strangely compelling master of the environment he’s created in the Pizzeria Vesuvio and he’s closely observed by the two characters who share the narrative, 19-year old Nia, escaped from her chaotic home life Wales; and Shan, who’s escaped the terror of Sri Lanka, leaving behind his wife and son. The two of them circle around Tuli, who conjures cash and arranges loans with a seemingly casual air. It feels as if he’s kindness itself, and yet the power-relations are toxic. The tension that feeds the narrative is Shan’s agonising quest to connect with his wife and child, and the horrifying insecurity of his life as an undocumented immigrant. Nia’s struggles are to reconcile the way she’s abandoned her sister and alcoholic mother and flunked her Oxford degree course to end up in the Pizzeria, and to find some way of understanding just who Tuli is. What does he do, exactly, to make this hold he has on the crowd of vulnerable, courageous people who work in the Pizzeria? It’s a complex relationship that develops between Tuli and Nia and I liked the way it grazed the edges of being a love story, without falling into that cliche.
Persevere beyond the first quarter of the book. There’s a little too much backstory running free of narrative tension here, but the impetus to read fast builds quickly once Nia gets more involved in Shan’s quest and Tuli’s apparent helpfulness.
Lalwani is master of the well-turned metaphor or simile: ‘The waiting has quickly become like cling film over his daily life’; ‘she carries the night itself away with her, the whole grey sky could be a fairy-tale cloak on her back’. Details of the way people permanently on the brink of disaster, who’ve suffered unspeakable misery to reach this uncomfortable point, are brilliantly observed, carefully rendered, and there is enough contrast between comfort and despair, and great literary skill, to make the read a real enjoyment. This could become a classic. It deserves to be a great success.
Thanks to Netgalley, Penguin and Viking for the chance to read this prior to publication.
Izzy Brown 