The Buddha of Suburbia

Rating:
Summary: Touching, acutely funny in parts and beautifully melancholy.
Review: I really like this book, both for the honesty of the narrators observations (there are parts of black and white stereotypes but most commonly complex shades of ethnic grey) which you see all the time in real life, and also for the striking wit which Kureishi employs to really dissect the people, the situation and the times which Karim was a part. The tenderness and understated love that the narrator had for his father was quite lovely too. While at times larger than life, the book is a moving account of growing up and maturing.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I studied the "Imperial Gaze" throughout this past semester and read some pretty interesting and varied stuff--The Satanic Verses, Kim, The Jewel in the Crown, to name a few. But I wondered why my professor would recommend this book to me without having us read it in class, so I picked it up and was floored. The Buddha of Suburbia isn't spectacular just because it handles important issues with such sharpness, but because it seems (and is) so relevant to our life here and now.

I was entranced while following the story of Karim. When you read about someone around your own age (not that this book isn't for all ages), but in an entirely new and different situation, and still feel a deep connection, you know you've just read a powerful story. The Buddha of Suburbia is a great example. It's told with such hard-hitting, direct prose that you can't help but know with heart-aching sadness that what happens to Karim throughout the novel actually does happen. Marriages fall apart, racism is real, etc and the confusion that swirls through Karim's head ensures that the reader will understand this. He doesn't have all the answers--noone does--but Karim tries to live through all the hardship, all the selfishness, and all the superficiality. Sometime's he's unsuccessful, but when he finally realizes what's important in life you see that he's going to make it through.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I studied the "Imperial Gaze" throughout this past semester and read some pretty interesting and varied stuff--The Satanic Verses, Kim, The Jewel in the Crown, to name a few. But I wondered why my professor would recommend this book to me without having us read it in class, so I picked it up and was floored. The Buddha of Suburbia isn't spectacular just because it handles important issues with such sharpness, but because it seems (and is) so relevant to our life here and now.

I was entranced while following the story of Karim. When you read about someone around your own age (not that this book isn't for all ages), but in an entirely new and different situation, and still feel a deep connection, you know you've just read a powerful story. The Buddha of Suburbia is a great example. It's told with such hard-hitting, direct prose that you can't help but know with heart-aching sadness that what happens to Karim throughout the novel actually does happen. Marriages fall apart, racism is real, etc and the confusion that swirls through Karim's head ensures that the reader will understand this. He doesn't have all the answers--noone does--but Karim tries to live through all the hardship, all the selfishness, and all the superficiality. Sometime's he's unsuccessful, but when he finally realizes what's important in life you see that he's going to make it through.

Rating:
Summary: Tedious, Pretentious and Annoying
Review: I would recommend this book if you enjoy main characters that are pretentious, annoying and unmotivated. Many people think this is a funny, insightful book, but I did not enjoy the main character. He really dragged the book down, as a confusing, unemployed, useless character.

Rating:
Summary: All in all a spiffing tale
Review: If you're familiar with Kureishi's work, you know the themes already, class conflict, a struggle for sexual identification, the problem of race (because our narrator is as British as the Queen Mum, but he looks as if he's just stepped off the boat from Bombay). Buddha of Suburbia is about finding one's place amid the violent upheaval of social change. Most of Kureishi's characters, like the rest of us inhabiting the modern material world, grope about for meaning through notions of romantic love, familial and cultural tradition, and the ancient doctrines of faith (twisted around as they might be) before finally returning to the more palpable and intelligible comfort of science and self-expression. Finely voiced, witty as always, a wonderfully compressed decadent pop history, I found this book energizing and I enjoyed the characters, especially Charlie Hero, the lost handsome lad turned punk idol. Dad as the Buddha is a gas. Cousin Jammie, the dazzlingly steady feminist, comes off a bit dry. I don't believe for a minute that the narrator is interested sexually in women (ditto the other works), but this may be some narrative requisite, personal secret desire, or a suggestion from the editor to broaden the reading base. Some of the action is a bit coarser in spots than I like. But all in all a spiffing tale.


Rating:
Summary: Anomie in 70s England
Review: It's hard not to like "The Buddha of Suburbia", Hanif Kureishi's Whitbread Prize winning novel. It's funny, touching and honest. At one level, it can be read as a commentary on the social and cultural upheavals of 70s England that reduced a whole nation to a state of anomie. Nobody escaped or was spared the effects of the malaise. It wasn't just the young pushing the boundaries of acceptable social norms and behaviour by dressing outrageously and spitting in the face of adults. Confusion reigned with the parents generation too, as they sought new meaning in their lives by experimenting with mysticism and eastern religion, the influences of a growing immigrant culture. Within the Indian and mixed race community, the adjustment process was further complicated by cultural incompatibilities that brought tragedy to some and a new dawn to others. Interestingly, the novel doesn't make dramatic capital of Karim's sexual ambiguity. It's merely observed, a metaphor for the sign of the times. His father, the novel's "buddha", thinks he has finally discovered his true self when he leaves his wife for Eva, but has he really ? He's still as useless and helpless unaided as when he first arrived as an immigrant in England. Eva, the relentless upgrader, is presumably English but she manifests energy levels associated with the tireless immigrant Indians. Confusing, eh ? Then there's Anwar who schemes and engages in emotional blackmail only to find himself frustrated and in a hopeless cul de sac when he lands a son-in-law from homeland who cannot function out of locale. His long suffering daughter, Jameela, forced into an arranged marriage, is both subservient and defiant (like Mahatma Ghandi) and becomes a towering figure of heroism. I found her offer of the olive branch to the baffoonish Changez the single most touching moment in the novel. You also know her mother (the Princess) has emerged triumphant when she quietly holds her own running the store while her husband wastes away. Kureishi's characterisation is razor sharp throughout. You may dislike his characters, like the horribly selfish Eleanor, who plunges the depths of social depravity to rid herself of any association with her own despised privileged background, but they're real and believable human beings. Then, there's Pyke, the theatre director, whose debauched lifestyle merely proves that you can't change the man underneath just by spouting new slogans. "The Buddha of Suburbia" is one incredibly enjoyable read. Kureishi manages to be funny, sharp and poignant, all at the same time and that's no mean feat. This novel comes highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Chalky
Review: Karim's trials make for a very interesting read, I read this book nearly in one sitting. The mixture of humour and drama is what I find most important, it tends to deal with sensitive issues like race and gender with such a deft touch. The book's realism is also another important factor, the school, the theatre and the people placed in this environment.

Some may find it difficult to empathise with the main character Karim, but a lot of the humour does involve Karim`s humilation, eg the dog episode! This is a very enjoyable book that you will find hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Glad not to be living in London during the 1970's
Review: London of the 1970's, as seen through the eyes of Karim, in the book of "The Buddha of Suburbia", seems to be numb and void of ethics, morality and humanity. It is a period of self-indulgence. All of the characters in the book tackle life in a nonchalant manner--nothing phases them. It is a period when "narcistic" pleasures dominate . There are no bars held in the pursuit of nihilistic venues. I'm glad that I was not living in London during the 1970's. It seems like a grey period, full of decadence, racism, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

With this setting in the background, we have Karim, a product of an Indian father and an English mother. Their marriage is at its wits end, as each pull into a different direction. Karim "hardly" seems torn when his father leaves his mother for the sake of Eva, accepting both her and her son Charlie, who he has a strong/sexual affinity to. He floats from one event to the other. He is able to bed his cousin Jammie and still be civil with her husband (who has witnessed the infedelity). When Jammie and her husband Changez join the commune and Jammie is impregnated by another man, they receive Karim's blessing. When Changez takes up with the Japanese whore, he receives Karim's blessing. He participates in an orgy with Pyke, Marlene, and Eleanor,(without prior consent) and is still able to appear in Pyke's plays (even though he has been sodomized and humiliatied in public).

Everything in the Buddha is without restraint and if it weren't for the comical and satirical fashion in which Hanif Kureishi portrayed events, one might be aghast and taken-off.

I felt sorry for Karim. He did not seem to be a master of his own destiny but rather a product of the times. The worst of times.

Rating:
Summary: The characters are fantastic
Review: No one in this novel is "normal", and that is what makes it so funny. It is hard to imagine that a family group like the one to which Karim belongs actually exists, and at least for me that is one of the reasons why is quite difficult to take his "sufferings" seriously. Actually it seems more likely that Karim took the approach of being an spectator of his own life. For example he is bisexual but his ambiguity in tastes does not create any sort of moral dilemma, and the events are taking place in the late sixties, early seventies, when for someone to express openly its non heterosexual tendencies could be very risky, moreover when his fellow school mates were a bunch of racists rednecks.

My feeling is that the author just want to convey that a world in which the social rules and parameters are always changing is more exiting than frightening no matter in which social group you belong. After all life is meant to learn and which courses you want to take is to a large extent only up to you.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Different!
Review: The best aspect of this book is the fact that all the characters Karim encounters seem to be somewhat dysfunctional in one way or the other. However, Kureishi talks of these people in such a casual tone, as if it is normal.

All of the characters that Karim surrounds himself around seem to be a bit peculiar; Haroon, Karim's father, who turns to live the life of a Buddhist, even though he is Muslim; Eva, Haroon's lover, who is always trying to be with the In-Crowd; Charlie, Karim's step-brother and part time lover, who strives to be in the spotlight; Pkye, the famous theatre director who is just a bit oversexed; and of course Eleanor, who is trying to get a grip on her past. I think this is Kureishi's way of showing how complex, compelling, and in some ways, shallow are society has become, and this is what makes the book so appealing. It is as if we have become numb to this new structure.

Kureishi also trys to make good points about race and tradition in comtemporary England. The two characters, Jamilia and Changez, seem to demonstrate the author views about culture by showing how strange their "marriage" is and why it wouldn't work. They seem to represent two types of 'Indians' in today's United Kingdom; Jamila being the one who has adopted Western mores and wants to be seen equally to her white counterparts, both socially and politically; whereas, Changez wants to maintain traditional Indian ideologies.

This was such a facinating and well-written book. Of all his works, I think this is his best!