‘Graffiti My Soul’
Released early this year, the novel Graffiti My Soul by British author Niven Govinden (We Are the New Romantics) is on balance an interesting read (thanks, Jana). This tightly-written, high-end melodrama revolves around a Tamil and Jewish 15-year-old from south of the Thames, his unrequited crush and vicious high school politics:
This is Surrey where nothing bad ever happens. Except somehow 15 year-old Veerapen, half Tamil, half-Jew and the fastest runner in the school has just helped bury Moon Suzuki, the girl he loved. His Dad has run off with an optician and his Mum’s going off the rails; then there’s his trainer, who’s has been accused of kiddie-fiddling. [Link]
The novel reads like a cross between Londonstani and high school murder movie Brick. It’s a bit of a trendrider — it covers happy slapping, MMS bullying, ostentatious multiculti and a title from a synthetic girl band — and the narrator is a bit of a shit. Graffiti didn’t hold my attention at first, but it’s a slim tale which turns gripping two-thirds of the way through. It’s got an interesting structure: the climax is delayed to the final pages, and the remainder is told in flashback.
The nights when we meet are when she practises sex with me… ‘I’ll need to try it out with you laying on your back tonight…’ She says these things before she’s said hello.
Having Moon this way, in secret, is better than not having her at all, even though I know that the next time I see her… she’ll be looking at me like I’m some deranged dependent muppet who can’t let go…
We carry on, silently, like Scientologists.
The narrator would be one hell of a precocious 15-year-old, the first suspension of disbelief. In real life, Govinden is a 33-year-old Hanif Kureishi fan:
Here was a young Asian [Kureishi] who was writing about Britain in a way that was brilliant, and brave, and true, and that was just where I wanted to be… some of those sex scenes are more celebratory than filled with self-loathing. There’s no emphasis on the seaside aspect which you still get with a lot of English novels — farce or sleaze. [Link]
The Hindu’s reviewer gushed over the author:
… the book’s editors… paid scant attention to trifles such as clean copy… It would have been different if Niven Govinden had gone by the name of Vikram Seth. And the irony is there’s no question who’s the better writer. [Link]
After reading Graffiti and abandoning Tarun Tejpal’s The Alchemy of Desire, I’ve decided I prefer novels written in the third person because of the richness and range of tone shifts. First person narratives with control freak male protagonists get old fast. It’s like the difference between group blogs and solo efforts: if you can get good writers, the group blog sings.
The Graffiti blog has dates for book readings and international releases.
on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007, 8:18 pm in Literature › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
ooo… shaDEs of vernon God Little, no?
promiSingh exxxcept
thAT is jesss’ 2 muCh navelGazing for me.. bohhring
naheeeeennn… notT when teh Action is Paced and SwifT and dippPED in bbbraggadoOCio and other sUch Man-Joos. LikeeD Vernon. Liked HolDEn. but what ABout NivEN?
this book was one of my favourites along with “the last jet engine laugh” (thanks manish :-D). it was refreshingly different from most of the other indian-english tripe that i’ve ended up reading for most of the year and i found it far more polished and less brutal than “londonstani” which i didn’t enjoy at all. both in terms of style and storytelling structure, “graffiti my soul” was more mature and better worked out (personal opinion, naturally). plus, i’m just not a fan of gratuitous violence which “londonstani” was replete with. “graffiti my soul” certainly had its share of gore but it was there for a reason that was pertinent to the narrative and characterisation. in “londonstani” the only purpose seemed to be to make the reader gag. also, i liked the simplicity of the climax. after that entire buildup of superegos, ultimately it boiled down to confused teens who had so little control over their actions.
and of course the narrator is a bit of a shit. this is a postmodern postcolonial anti-hero for crissakes. :-P
not so sure about your preference for third person novels but i’ll thrash that out with you some other time. :-D
Interesting comment Manish “I’ve decided I prefer novels written in the third person because of the richness and range of tone shifts. First person narratives with control freak male protagonists get old fast”..
I enjoyed Hanif Kureishi’s “Intimacy” which is a first person narrative.
I enjoyed Rushdie’s “midnights children”, which if I remember it right is written in first person, but I think Rushdie shifted from first person to third person in between..
I agree with you, long boring first person narratives are hard to read, but if they are done well, u can relate better to the novel/book..there is some kind of Intimacy between the reader and the writer in first person narratives..
I prefer third person narratives too…narrative with multiple protagonists… I particularly loved micheal cunninghams novel “hours” which won a pulitzer some time back.. third person novel, multiple protagonists,with story within a story interacting, story told in different time/tone shifts.. with virginia woolf as herself in the novel, virginia wolfs reader, and virginia wolfs character in her novel all three interacting , different time shifts..and then there was stream of consciousness too in the novel..The best third person novel I read in recent times in terms of style of writing..
Manish, Do you have any favourite books written in third person? would love to know..