Novel of the week Luiza Sauma
Nikita Lalwani’s third novel unfolds in a London restaurant, Pizzeria Vesuvio, which has square tables, candles, carnations and a sign that declares, “Vesuvio: Your home from home!” But no Italians work there. The food is cooked by Tamil chefs from Sri Lanka, many of them illegal immigrants. You People follows two of Vesuvio’s newest recruits.
In the kitchen, there’s Shan, who fled the Sri Lankan civil war after his father was murdered. “Remember your new name at all times,” he tells himself, “don’t be stupid and make actual friends… Think of it as a hunger fast, a devotional marathon, a computer game in which you have only one life.” Then there’s Nia, an IndianWelsh waitress who escaped her abusive mother and dropped out of Oxford. She has never met her Indian father, and is mistaken for an Italian “with her permanent bisque tan and dark hair”.
You People is a hothouse of secrets and dreams. Everyone is “a bit in love” with Tuli, the Vesuvio’s beautiful Tamil manager, a charity-shop Byron with Robin Hood tendencies, forever handing out money and favours. Tuli promises to reunite Shan with his family, but what are his real intentions? Nia keeps asking him, “Where does the money come from, Tuli?”
Every so often, truth escapes like steam from a pressure cooker. The UK Border Agency arrests one of the waitresses, who had stolen someone else’s identity. Shan wonders, “What are the pieces that go to make a person? How many of her anecdotes were true?”
Lalwani, born in Rajasthan and raised in Cardiff, has a keen sense for slippery identities. In her debut, Gifted, a maths prodigy longs for normality; her second novel, The Village, questioned the ethics of British filmmakers making a documentary about an Indian prison. You People is a short, complex novel that shines a light behind the smiles at your local restaurant, and asks tough questions about the nature of goodness in an unfair society.