Square tiles, round mosaic

The Family Took Shape By Shashi Bhat Cormorant Books 280 pp; $22

In Shashi Bhat’s enigmatic first novel The Family

Took Shape, 10-year-old Mira Acharya thinks back to when her father was still alive. Her parents would “stay up late watching the Fox Network (her father’s head on her mother’s stomach, folded over each other in their bed like resting cows.) They would fall asleep with the television still on, and it flashed over their sleeping bodies until morning, when Mira and Ravi would crawl in there with them.” The sheets were “warm as fresh roti.”

But that was years ago, before her father was killed in a car crash. Since then, Mira’s big brother has been diagnosed with autism. Ravi has been placed in special ed at their elementary school and is not expected to lead a normal life. Mira’s busy, cash-strapped mother is anxious for the future. This is not the life she had envisioned when she came to Canada from India as an excited newlywed.

This in a nutshell is the premise of Bhat’s debut, her subtle, sophisticated take on the immigrant novel. Here, a family’s attempt to rebuild itself from broken parts parallels its efforts to lay down roots. The inevitable passing of time is a theme of this work, which moves softly, but relentlessly forward. It is set in multicultural Richmond Hill, glimpsing occasionally back to India, and follows Mira from the age of six to 28. Against the backdrop of her relationship with her mother and handicapped brother, we intimately observe the evolution of her identity and character.

Bhat’s approach is two-pronged: She divides the action into discrete, tenuously linked, episodes, while, Proustian style, she rejects the conventional scaffolding of plot. We advance chronologically, but have no idea where we’re headed. Instead we respond, like Mira, to an accumulation of detail. As the title indicates, this a work about becoming: A family, a person, a novel.

Bhat keeps us so focused on the individual that we barely realize we are reading a very Canadian story, one that explores immigration, multiculturalism and our much vaunted handling of “difference.” It begins with a young Mira and Ravi and their shared love of art. The siblings take drawing lessons together after school. Ravi repeats himself and makes odd sounds, and never draws exactly what he sees. Still, he is the gifted one. In special ed, however, Ravi perceives himself differently. Mira wishes she had a normal big brother. She does not tell when a freckle-faced bully starts picking on Ravi.

Mira is not like Ravi, but she gets picked on, too. Lucy Chin envies Mira’s long hair. She pinches Mira’s arms and kicks the back of her legs, leaving bruises. She forces Mira to stand in a bee hive covered in applesauce. Mira’s mother, preoccupied with finances and Ravi, does not notice Mira’s anxiety.

Mira is skeptical of her mother. She doubts her mother grasps Canadian norms. Her mother burdens her with inappropriately adult concerns. Mira wants to be a normal kid. She often treats Ravi cruelly, but as she moves into adolescence, she must help care for her fat and frequently mortifying brother. It is within this fiery crucible that Mira — painfully awkward herself — must decide who she is.

Through Mira, Bhat questions the Canadian commitment to celebrating difference, as when Mira’s teacher tells students that they must respect others, but cannot offer a convincing reason why. It is significant that Lucy, who bullies Mira, is Chinese; and that a student who later berates Mira is dark-skinned. Bhat suggests the tensions of multicultural society are not so black and white.

Finished high school and free at last, Mira enrols in university in Toronto, but she feels alienated from her peers. Bhat captures her state of mind in an image of an automobile caught in traffic:

“She once saw a car halted in the middle of an intersection, trapped by the unfortunate timing of traffic and lights. The cars around it honked in violent cacophony, and the crossing multitude of pedestrians — gloveless, shivering, stylish — swore and jeered; one pounded the car’s hood with his fist as he passed.”

This is sometimes a dark novel, but it is never dour. The Acharyas possess rich inner lives. Mira’s mother entertains and inspires with stories of her mischievous Indian girlhood and tales of Hindu gods. Mira’s profoundly artistic intelligence — her appreciation of colour, texture, taste and language; her rueful humour and susceptible imagination — serve as our guide through this work.

Comic relief comes in the form of Lala Aunty, who insinuates herself into the family. The host of a popular Indian cooking show, Eating With

Aunty, Lala holds frequent dinner parties for Indians who are alone or new to the country or down on their luck. Her meals are notoriously bad, but her heart is good. Over the years she emerges as the family’s fairy godmother.

The Family Took Shape has a strange and very beautiful ending, proof of Bhat’s tremendous promise. It may take a moment to get used to the general quietness of this novel. But the more time you invest, the greater the reward.