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Jan
19
Book Review: Corner Shop by Roopa Farooki
2009 at 10am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Set for publication January 20, 2009 by St. Martin’s Press
Oscar Wilde once wrote, “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” Roopa Farooki builds her second novel Corner Shop around this concept as she chronicles several decades in the life of the Khalil family in this multigenerational story. Luhith “Lucky” Khalil is the son of Jinan, a Bangladeshi businessman, and Delphine, a French ex-pat who gave up a promising career to raise her son. The Khalils live in London, but really, this story could take place anywhere in the world. The book’s title refers to the corner shop owned by Lucky’s grandfather Zaki (Jinan’s father), which is the site of much of the action in the story.
In the first half of the book, entitled “Dreamers,” we first meet Lucky. An avid footballer (soccer player, to those of us in the U.S.), Lucky dreams of making one of England’s big teams and playing in the World Cup. He also dreams of dating the gorgeous Portia, a model in the making who works at Zaki’s shop. When Lucky’s coach changes his position from striker to goalie the week before an important game, Lucky believes he’s just seen his dream go up in smoke, but he works diligently, hoping scouts at the game will recognize his talent. He also hangs around Zaki’s corner shop hoping to be noticed by Portia. Lucky’s dreams are relatively straight-forward; he wants to be a professional football player, and he wants to be with Portia.
But things are not so clear for the rest of his family. Jinan works increasingly long hours at “Very Important Meetings” and does not seem to notice that his wife has become depressed and lonely. Delphine, who once dreamed of an important career of her own, despairs at the thought that Lucky will soon be grown up, and her life will no longer have direction. She feels that her marriage has become dry and passionless, and she dreams of something better. She dreams about the past, when she and Zaki—whom she dated several years before she met Jinan—met by chance and had a passionate affair. Simply put, Delphine wants something more. And Zaki? He wants to enjoy his bachelor’s life and his young lovers without being criticized…but he also wants something more. The “Dreamers” portion of Corner Shop asks us to consider each character’s dreams and the potential consequences of their being realized.
I can’t say much about what happens between the characters without spoiling major plot twists, so suffice it to say that things get complicated. Deception and betrayal in the name of love and dream fulfillment become major themes for exploration, though Farooki’s handling of them this time around is not as adept as in her first novel Bitter Sweets.
The second portion of the book, “Players,” which spans several decades, focuses on the idea that each of the characters is playing a role, acting the way he or she is expected to act under the circumstances, without revealing their true emotions or desires and without further consideration of the cost of their dreams. Relationships continue to be confusing and difficult, and Farooki makes it clear that these characters are all still looking for something to add meaning to their lives. Some of them have gotten what they wanted, and some of them will never get it, and Farooki invites us to consider, as Wilde’s quote (which she invokes throughout the book) suggests, which of those is more tragic.
Corner Shop had great potential but ultimately did not meet my hopes or expectations. Farooki seizes on important concepts but fails to flesh them out satisfactorily. She introduces storylines with the potential to explore relevant themes, particularly when she takes a look at Delphine’s group of girlfriends and the differences between all of their lives, but she does not make them prevalent enough to matter, and in the end, they do not contribute anything meaningful to the examination of her themes. Midway through, she also introduces a possible complication, but we never know if that possible thing is actually true, so we can only imagine its hypothetical consequences. It seems that she cannot decide whether Corner Shop is chick lit, literary fiction, family drama, or something else. I don’t expect books to fit neatly into one category, but this one jumps around a bit too much for my taste.
There is a quiet sense of sadness and a palpable disappointment dwelling in each of Farooki’s characters, and she does succeed in examining the consequences of reaching for our dreams (or not reaching for them) and either getting them or failing. Unfortunately, none of the characters was sympathetic enough to draw me into the story, so I felt rather detached from their world as I was reading. The family’s multicultural make-up offers the opportunity to look at other important themes, but Farooki does not invoke it in any meaningful way, and I really wanted her to add depth by doing so.
This story about unfulfilled dreams and complex family relationships, about longing and despair, could be set anywhere in the world—in New York City, or San Francisco, or Paris, or Sydney, or even a small village somewhere. In that way, the themes are universal and accessible to all of us, which is certainly a plus, but Farooki fails to take advantage of the wealth of thematic material available to her and ends up in the limbo between success and failure. This is an okay read but nothing to get excited about. 3 out of 5.
Read my review of Farooki’s first novel Bitter Sweets.
Special thanks to Monica at St. Martin’s for sending me this book to read and review.
No related posts.
That’s disappointing. I really hate that sort of detached feeling when you just can’t get into the characters. Regardless of how brilliant a book is otherwise, I’m not going to like it without that connection. Thanks for the review!
That’s too bad. I hate when a book doesn’t live up to it’s potential. Pretty cover though.
I just gave you an award on my blog.
why is so much fiction, especially so called literary fiction, these days sad and bleak? I am sorry, but I do not really want a more hopeless view of life.
I read this about a month ago and was a little disappointed (my review of it will be up once it’s published). Really liked Bitter Sweets, but Corner Shop fell flat for me. But the cover is gorgeous.
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I’m sorry this one was a disappointment! I really want to read Bitter Sweets.
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