Starred review from May 1, 2023
The protagonists in Injam’s dynamic and insightful debut collection explore cultural identity and family relationships in India and the U.S. In “The Bus,” the narrator, a customer support worker for Bank of America, takes an hours-long bus ride from Bengaluru to his hometown to visit his parents. The trip turns eerie as one passenger after another gets up to use the restroom and then disappears, and the remaining passengers feel the need to escape as the air in the bus grows increasingly cold. It seems their journey ends in their deaths, though a playful tone offsets the morbid theme (“I knew about planes, but I didn’t know these things happen on buses too,” the narrator’s seatmate tells him). In “The Immigrant,” Aditya plans to relocate to Philadelphia from India to help earn money for his mother’s lung transplant. On arrival in the U.S., he’s met at the airport by Indian students who advise him on how to act around white people. The inventive form of “The Math of Living” conveys how a coder at the Chicago Tribune reflects in mathematical terms on his impending visit back to India, where he expects everything to be “formulaic” after reuniting with his family (“My father will do or . My mother will do or ”). Injam succeeds in equal measure with the variety of styles, and he offers enriching details about the various experiences his characters face as immigrants and offshore workers. This is a triumph.
June 1, 2023
Young Indians and Indian Americans try to find their footings in the world in this contemplative debut story collection. In "The Bus," the opening story, a man embarks on what proves to be a strange and unexpectedly perilous visit to his hometown. In "Summers of Waiting," a woman living in the U.S. returns to India to visit the dying grandfather who raised her. For Aditya, in "The Immigrant," his first semester as a graduate student in the U.S. is a struggle to survive. In "The Protocol," another Indian immigrant seeking to stay in the U.S. takes a chance by marrying an American woman for a visa. Most of Injam's characters experience deep emotion but don't know how to communicate their love and longing, perhaps constrained by societal expectations of their gender, sexuality, or religion in expressing how they feel. Many of the stories serve as eloquent meditations on grief, but "Lunch at Paddy's," which tries to be more lighthearted, falls flat. In it, a man named Padmanabham is bewildered by what to serve when his son invites a White school friend to lunch. While some of the humor lands (what kind of grocery store doesn't stock Maggi?), the story's attempt to showcase the multifaceted anxieties of recent immigrants doesn't quite work; why doesn't anyone, including the two kids plenty exposed to American culture, suggest ordering a pizza? But almost every other story offers readers at least one moment of pure literary satisfaction. Linked by theme and tone, the entries are different enough to merit the reader's investment in the rich worlds the author creates for each of them. While the collection takes little risk, it offers an array of characters and circumstances that capture contemporary concerns with grace; the language, well-rendered details, and strong story structures combine to deliver revelations. Injam's title story, in particular, is a testament to his command of the short form. Injam comes close to fulfilling the promise of his title with these meticulously crafted narratives.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from May 15, 2023
Eleven gems make up Injam's stellar debut short-story collection showcasing exquisite quotidian beauty haunted by seemingly inevitable loss--of home, family, lovers, identity--among contemporary citizens of a global diaspora. Indian-born, Chicago-based Injam underscores that limbo in "The Immigrant," in which an Indian graduate student arrives in the U.S. with grandiose plans for a high-paying job with which he will save his mother's life. In "The Protocol," marriage to a stranger might be the only path to securing a green card. In "Lunch at Paddy's," a recently immigrated Indian family struggles to prepare lunch for their young son's friend who will be their first-ever white guest; alas, googling "what to cook for white people" and "things white people say" yields no obvious answers. Annual sojourns home are always bittersweet for a young woman visiting her beloved octogenarian grandfather who raised her in "Summers of Waiting." In "The Bus," a young man journeying homeward recalls the brother he lost in childhood as his fellow passengers keep disappearing into the bathroom. A false accusation between haves and have-nots destroys two generations of a family in "The Zaminder's Watch." A husband mourns his beloved wife in "The Sea." A son honors his overbearing, over-caring father in "The Best Possible Experience," which proves to be exactly what Injam provides lucky readers.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.