Book Review: Someone You Love Is Gone (Gurjinder Basran) @RandomHouseCA @VikingBooks

I am always looking to discover Canadian novelists to add to my repertoire, so when I discovered Gurjinder Basran and found out her newest novel, Someone You Love Is Gone, was publishing this month (yesterday, in fact!), I added it to the top of my TBR pile.

Initially, I was finding this story downright depressing.   Simran, the lead character and whose narrative voice is most heard throughout the story, has just lost her mother and is still grieving over the disintegration of her marriage and the loss of her child.   As her life is unraveling, she begins to question all sorts of incidents in her child, especially those involving her younger brother, and the past comes flooding back.

Told through alternating time periods, the present (dealing with her mother’s funeral, family relationships and her own grief) and remembering the past (her brother being sent away, talk of arranged marriage and trying to balance a patriarchal culture with what teenaged Simran wants) the author is able to delve into and dissect so many issues within very few pages. Someone You Love Is Gone packed a serious punch!

Grief is obviously explored throughout the pages, but, in the end, this story became an investigation into all sorts of loss: loss of one’s self, loss of another, loss of a dream, loss of a path.

It was very diverse; I loved that the characters were Indian and various forms of the Indian culture and customs was discussed throughout the pages.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys adult contemporary fiction; it was dynamic, well written and will absolutely stay with you long after you have turned the final page.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for a digital copy of this novel; it was my pleasure to provide an honest review.