Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love

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The struggle of interracial relationships was pinpointed from both sides, too, with both parties on the outskirts of a dynamic they otherwise weren’t party too. Every aspect of her body or personality was up for inspection: too big, too small, too available, too hidden, too much, not enough. A daughter asks her mother to shut up, only to shut her up for good; an exhausted wife walks away from the husband who doesn’t understand her; on holiday, lovers no longer understand each other away from home. Beautiful writing, enticing short stories, exploring the narrative of intimate and complicated relationships in motherhood, womanhood and friendship.

There is a simplicity to ea These tales vividly capture the experience of feeling constrained by family expectations, but also of not quite fitting the norms of British culture either. It’s a different matter entirely for the daughter, Reem, in Summer, reluctantly holidaying with a mother who provokes guilt and fury equally. This is an incredibly solid collection of stories that explore the complexities hidden in the closest of relationships. The collection is underpinned by recurrent themes of cultural differences and expectations, the navigation of mixed-race relationships, marriage, love and family.

But usually, Qureshi takes the reader plausibly inside the inner recesses of characters’ hearts and minds. The longest story, Too Much, explores the mother /daughter theme through Shaheen, distraught and disbelieving when Amal cuts all communication with her, eventually coming to an acceptance. I really enjoyed that aspect though I can see how it may not work for certain readers who may prefer short stories with definitive endings. And all of them just fit the title so beautifully and as a reader you are left with the grief of what wasn’t addressed between loved ones. They were caricatures of sorts: the women often painted as hysterical, the husbands distant and unaware, the mothers hyper-critical and unsympathetic.

There is a sense relatability particularly in the way families, tradition and expectations from the older generations versus new were written. The first bite is good, but then you take another bite and you know you are in chocolate nirvana,or in this case, you are immersed completely in the story. These tales vividly capture the experience of feeling constrained by family expectations, but also of not quite fitting the norms of British culture either . It sounds like these stories might be more potent than her memoir, which was highly readable but a little lacking in substance (it felt more like it could have been a long magazine article). In Premonition, the very fine opening story, a chance meeting prompts a British Pakistani woman to remember a teenage crush.I gave 2 stars, as the stories themselves were easy to read and written well, also there were some parts where I was able relate to, the first story, where the weekend parties with family friends were described, was my childhood and teen years! One of the book's silliest tales, Superstitious, features a woman who loses her boyfriend unexpectedly and attributes it to passing by a purportedly cursed tree. After recently having lost my own mother, I find myself gravitating towards reads that explore mother/daughter relationships as it provides me with a sense of comfort I can’t quite articulate.