Putting the past to rest
Someone You Love is Gone, B.C. writer Gurjinder Basran’s follow up to her award-winning debut novel Everything Was Goodbye, is the story of a woman’s search for herself amidst grief, family, cultural identity and the countless losses we endure throughout life.
This generation-spanning story is told through chapters dedicated to specific time frames — Before, Then and Now. “Before” deals exclusively with the protagonist’s mother’s life in India before Canada and motherhood; “Then” focuses on protagonist Simran as a disgruntled suburban B. C. teenager; and “Now” navigates the aftermath of her mother’s death. “Before” chapters teasingly frame the “Then” and “Now” chapters and neatly propel each subplot forward.
Life as a first generation Canadian doesn’t offer the Simran of “Then” easy or clear choices. What with her mother’s inability to get over her past, her alcoholic father, her “special” brother whose poetic offerings has his mother believing he’s the reincarnation of her dead love and her younger pious Christian sister, as the eldest kid, she has a lot to deal with.
The Simran of “Now” is an unhappily married empty nester staring blankly at her life. The rebelliousness she heralded as a teen has collapsed.
She has so tightly enmeshed fact with fiction even she can’t discern which is which. It’s what she doesn’t tell her therapist that’s most telling as she unpacks the heart hidden behind the finely honed façade that’s fooling no one but herself.
Basran’s keen observational skills highlight the blurred lines between relationships in life and how they bleed together. She weaves a thread of relatable humour that buoys the inherent heaviness of the narrative. The humour and pathos of a three-way conversation between Simran, her therapist and an apparition of her dead mother only she can see, for example, highlights how extreme and opposing emotions create chaos in the minds of the bereaved.
Another clever narrative trick is Basran’s repetition of sentiments and phrases from different sides of the story in different generations to hone her theme of owning your past and then letting it go.
Although epic in scope, Someone You Love is Gone is economically and poetically written. It serves up a rich narrative with a cultural and generation-crossing protagonist supported by a cast of equally compelling characters. Elizabeth Mitchell is a Toronto writer and editor.