The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

“Dad taught me to flirt with everyone I met, girls and boys alike, and I came to see charm, rather than courtesy or honesty, or even decency, as the primary social grace.”

Clearly a constant fixture on all the editions of the 1001 books you must read before you die for a reason, Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia is at heart an enjoyable, compelling and often transgressive coming of age tale. The recipient of the 1990 Whitbread Award for the best first novel, it centres on seventeen year old Karim, the offspring of an Indian father and English mother (much like the author), the impact of his father’s affair and his resultant attempts to fashion himself as a kind of guru for hire among the smart set frequented by his new lover, Eva. That serves as the launching pad for twisting side tales that will have you engrossed.

Take for instance, the man you can’t have but everyone wants – Charlie; Karim is smitten. It doesn’t help that Charlie is the son of the woman Karim’s father is romantically involved with. He is far more interested in securing international fame than responding to Karim’s crush.

Karim’s cousin and sometimes bed partner is a rather interesting character. The reader feels her constant struggle to reconcile the world around her and that imposed on her by her father. This leads to a rather disastrous arranged marriage which introduces the reader to the delightfully hopeless Changez. He steals the novel for me as a figure of such sadness and schadenfreude. He might be useless in his father in law’s grocery store but don’t let him loose with a sex toy!

There is quite a bit of sex going on in the book and that’s natural given that it is possibly the central preoccupation for a teenager. Sex is fraught with danger and despair here. It drives a wedge in Karim’s family life. It leads to some often hilarious circumstances  and yet to reduce the story to merely its sexual leanings would do the book a disservice. Growing up is all about questioning everything, where is this going, why do my parents act this way, who am I, what do I want? An endless array of questions and that sense of growing curiosity combined with the self obsession of young adulthood is fantastically captured here.
What is particularly remarkable are the aspects that resonate regardless of one's race, upbringing or circumstances there are central human truths about growing up we can all relate to. That sense of the forbidden, the inexplicable, the precociousness of youth is infectious. Life is a glorious mess and that is something this book so beautifully expresses.

 5 out of 5 people have moments where their parents are a source of embarrassment.