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A review by tangleroot_eli
Gabriel's Gift by Hanif Kureishi
3.0
This is an intriguing read (though it could've used about 50 more pages - never thought I'd say that), but I'm not wild about it. Things move too quickly; we see cause or effect but seldom both; everything seems slightly off-kilter. Gabriel reads too young for me, especially if he grew up surrounded by musicians and their groupies. Other characters - and the narrator - kept telling me Gabriel is precocious, but I never saw it.
I was also depressed by the narrowness that surrounded "dreaming big." For Kureishi, you aren't "dreaming big" until you're dreaming of being a famous (not even necessarily good) film director, or a famous musician, or a teacher of famous musicians, or the owner of a restaurant catering to famous musicians and movie stars - the usual starf*cker crap. Kureishi wants to espouse chasing ambitions beyond the ordinary, but he defines worthy ambitions so narrowly for his characters that they end up seeming more trapped than the "losers" they leave behind. If this were a conscious authorial decision, I would think it was great, but it comes off the page as honestly the way the author feels: either you're a big pop or film star, or you're nobody at all. By that definition, he wouldn't even consider himself to be "someone."
I was also depressed by the narrowness that surrounded "dreaming big." For Kureishi, you aren't "dreaming big" until you're dreaming of being a famous (not even necessarily good) film director, or a famous musician, or a teacher of famous musicians, or the owner of a restaurant catering to famous musicians and movie stars - the usual starf*cker crap. Kureishi wants to espouse chasing ambitions beyond the ordinary, but he defines worthy ambitions so narrowly for his characters that they end up seeming more trapped than the "losers" they leave behind. If this were a conscious authorial decision, I would think it was great, but it comes off the page as honestly the way the author feels: either you're a big pop or film star, or you're nobody at all. By that definition, he wouldn't even consider himself to be "someone."