The Year of the Runaways

I read this book about a month ago, and it’s already fading from my memory a bit, so here’s a review before it slips out of my memory altogether.

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota made it to the Man Booker shortlist last year, and ever since I heard about the book’s theme (Indian migrants living in England), I’ve wanted to read this book.

This book tells the story of three young men – Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver who has left behind a horrific past in India; Avtar, who sold a kidney to get the money to come to England; and Randeep, who has come to England with the help of a visa-wife – Narinder.

Narinder’s story is also weaved into the lives of these men – and she turns out to be the most exciting and surprising character of them all.

All three men are under the impression that they could have a better life in England. But is life easier over there? And what do they have to sacrifice for this mythical better life?

My Review

On the surface, the book is organized to tell the story of the one year in the lives of these protagonists when their paths crossways in England. But it goes deep into everyone’s backstories, and so it is not as the slice-of-life type of book as I was expecting.

The book starts a little abruptly, dropping us straight into their lives in Sheffield, England, and then slowly developing their backstories a bit at a time, enhancing the suspense of how they got there.

I know many migrants who went on to settle in England very well (some of them were students who overstayed their visas), and I’ve heard a lot of the stories they told. So, I can tell you that every line that Sahota wrote about these three men rang true to me – right from their methods of migrating into the country, their way of living, and the kind of work they did. Mr. Sahota did his research.

But because such stories were very familiar to me, I have to say I didn’t entirely relish them as much as I expected. There was no novelty factor! And because their lives were so grim and dull, the book reflected that too, and up to the middle section, reading this book was a bit of a chore.

It was only after the middle of the book when Narinder comes into the spotlight that I sat up and took notice. Narinder is not a character that you fall in love with. She is complex – extraordinarily religious and makes choices that, as a reader, I found ridiculous. But there is something to her, some force, a moral core that makes you want to keep reading and find out whether she gets her happy ending.

Eventually, my heart just broke when she lost her faith in God and her religion – Sikhism. The section where she removes her turban and loosens her hair is haunting.

Just like her faith in God.

The actual book ending was a bit abrupt, but thankfully, there was an epilogue tagged on, which shows the lives of all these people a decade later. I badly needed the epilogue to give a little closure to the story.

The epilogue also gives a bit of sunshine to an otherwise grim story.

But that’s my opinion on the epilogue – I saw many reviews on the net complaining that it was too hokey and unrealistic, but I liked it.

I guess that’s the case for most people.

In short

This book was one of the books that were a strong contender for the Man Booker in 2015. However, the award eventually went to A Brief History of Seven Killings, which I admit is the more complex and better book.

The Year of the Runaways, while good, stopped short at actually rising to the level of sublime.