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May 5, 2002
REVIEW: Coming of age
IN these celebrity-fixated times any form of publicity — good or bad — is generally regarded as favourable. So despite recent controversy, Hanif Kureishi’s status in the United Kingdom as one of the leading literary personalities remains undiminished, and, if anything, the notoriety generated by his third novel Intimacy, and the resultant public family spat, probably helped enhance his reputation as an enfant terrible. But in the end it is always the literary quality of an author’s output that adds to, or detracts from, his public profile. Consequently, his literary fans keenly awaited Kureishi’s fourth and latest novel, Gabriel’s gift.
The novel begins with fifteen-year-old Gabriel living in West London with his mother, Christine. His father, Rex Bunch, an aging and almost perpetually unemployed rock musician, has been tossed out of home by Christine, who shut the door on him with the parting words, “You’re the ballast in our balloon mate. We’ll be better off in every way.” Faced with a broken home, Gabriel is the innocent onlooker, who despondently pictures the sudden change as it were “a doll’s house with an axe through it”.
Evicted from the family home, his near-destitute father, Rex, has found a bed-sit in a rather squalid, run-down house. Having doomed himself to keeping company with other ‘superannuated’ long-haired, dirty jeaned rock musician has-beens, Rex dreams of the vanished rock era when he played bass guitar alongside the rock idol Lester Jones, a David Bowie clone — who ‘was neither boy nor girl, changing himself continuously as he expressed and lost himself in various disguises’. The cause of Rex’s banishment from the pinnacle of his musical career as a member of the group ‘Lester Jones and The Leather Pigs’ lay with his high platform shoes, from which, while shimmying, he fell breaking his ankle. By the time Rex recovered Lester had changed his stage persona and no longer required his services.
The mother, Christine, now finds herself caught between a determination to provide her son a stable future -”all that matters to me is that Gabriel doesn’t turn out like his father” — and the urge to resurrect her own life. She finds a job as a low-paid waitress in a fashionable new bar and after a few alcohol-charged evenings links up with a pretentious young painter named George. Busy with her new life, Christine finds an au pair to keep an eye on her son. To his discomfort Gabriel finds himself in the care of Hannah, an ever hungry, large and hairy refugee from a former Eastern European country, who is inventively described as ‘a big round woman, like a post-box with little legs’.
Gabriel has a remarkable gift for drawing and hopes some day to become a filmmaker. Recognizing young Gabriel’s abilities when he meets him, the rock star Lester Jones tells him, “Talent might be a gift but it still has to be cultivated. The imagination is like a fire or furnace; it has to be stoked, fed and attended to. One thing sets another ablaze. Keep it going.” And when Gabriel replies that so far he has only been copying other artists, Lester advises him, ‘It’s what you make of the stolen objects that’s important. If you take something and use it, then it’s worthwhile. If you just copy it and it stays the same, then nothing’s been done.’ Therein lies the crux of the tale.
Lester Jones presents Gabriel with one of his large crayon pictures that he titles ‘Weird weather’. Both parents seize upon the picture as a means of making money. To counter them Gabriel hides the original picture for himself and paints two fake copies, giving one to each of his parents. His gullible father promptly sells his copy of the painting to a restaurateur, a former rock band follower named Speedy, as an original new work by Lester Jones. Later, when Speedy discovers that Lester Jones regards Gabriel as a talented new painter he tells the boy, “That’s an imprimatur enough for me” and quickly engages him to do his portrait, thus setting Gabriel upon what the reader hopes will be his artistic future.
The book, to my mind, has two threads running through it. Primarily, it is about a young Londoner’s coming-of-age story, while signifying, by the examples set by the two parents, that no one really comes of age. Secondly, it is also Hanif Kureishi’s not-so-subtle discourse on artistic talent.
As Speedy tells Gabriel, “you’re one lucky guy, Mr Gabriel...If you can really do it, you’re the top man. But I know those guys, the creative artists. They’re selfish and self-obsessed; the desire for success isn’t pretty. It’s a hunger that never goes away or can be satisfied. That’s what makes people into stars.” Is this an apologia from Kureishi? Not quite. More likely it is a justification.
Noticeably, some pages later, a mega-rich movie producer character in the book, Jake Ambler, while expressing regret that he never had the imagination or the confidence to believe that he could be talented, wistfully adds, “It’s my loss - doing art gives a man big balls.” And, in that lies the unconcealed message. This is how, I believe, Kureishi wishes us to perceive him — a literary star with large whatevers; implying thereby that he will write howsoever he pleases, possessing little desire to be held accountable to anyone.
These author-induced perceptions can of course be misleading. With Gabriel’s gift Hanif Kureishi has clearly shed the much-criticised middle-aged angst and melancholia found in his recent work. Instead, we get a story about youthful talent breaking its way out of the disorder of everyday suburban life. Initially, there are a few odd reminders of magic realism — winking daffodils and drawings of boots and a chair coming to life — but they peter out inexplicably, almost as if Kureishi decided to change his style midway.
By the time the reader reaches the feel-good ending it is likely he will pronounce Gabriel’s gift to be an enjoyable and engaging piece of fiction. Finding myself unable to disagree with this sentiment, I would, however, insist on adding a qualification: Kureishi has done much better. With his latest transformation revealing a new sunnier literary disposition. Let us hope that his next book proves to be more significant.
Gabriel’s gift
By Hanif Kureishi
Faber and Faber
ISBN 0571207928
352pp. £9.99
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