Tell Me How to Be

July 1, 2021

In this follow-up to the NPR best-booked If You See Me, Don't Say Hi, Los Angeles-based songwriter Akash leaves Los Angeles (and the boyfriend he keeps secret from his family) and returns home to Illinois when his widowed mother sells the family home. He plans to pack his things, mourn his father, and mend family ties, but he didn't anticipate meeting his first romantic interest and falling in love again. With a 75,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for Dec. 2020.

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Starred review from September 20, 2021
In Patel’s resplendent debut, a mother and son reveal their secrets and regrets. Twenty-eight-year-old struggling songwriter Akash Amin learns early on that the problem with lies is that “they always circle back to the truth.” His widowed mother, Renu, meanwhile, believes lies “are like children, the second you conceive them, you must protect them at all costs.” Akash leaves his lover, Jacob, in Santa Monica to help clear out his childhood home in Illinois on the first-year anniversary of the death of his physician father before Renu sells the house and departs for London. There, while preparing a puja, Akash finally comes out to Renu, confronts his successful older brother, Bijal, about the real reasons behind an embarrassing drunken incident at Bijal’s wedding four years earlier, and deals with the secrets behind a betrayal by an adolescent crush. Renu, meanwhile, wrestles with the fallout from forsaking happiness for the sake of tradition in her arranged marriage, a long-ago forbidden love with a Muslim man, and an insufferably lonely life surrounded by “cornfields, strip malls and Chinese restaurants named after feelings.” Patel skillfully maneuvers through the treacherous territory of abandoned dreams, family squabbles, and cultural clashes before finding a resounding catharsis for mother and son. The result is noteworthy and memorable.

September 15, 2021
After his father's death, Akash Amin returns home and struggles with secrets and sobriety. The debut novel by Patel, author of the acclaimed story collection If You See Me, Don't Say Hi (2018), continues his exploration of Indian American characters who fight against stereotypes and the expectations of others. Akash wants to live in LA and produce the kind of R&B records he grew up listening to in the 1990s, but his alcoholism and bad decisions keep getting in the way of his dreams. He flies home for the puja commemorating his father's death one year earlier and faces a brother and mother who don't know he's gay and who still resent him for causing a drunken scene the night of his brother's wedding. Renu, Akash's mother, has spent the year since her husband's death watching American soap operas, drinking wine, and holding her tongue at the constant microaggressions from so many supposedly well-meaning White friends. Renu has decided to move back to London, where the man she almost married still lives. No one knows about Renu's secret desire, but she spends the puja thinking about this lost chance at love. At the same time, Akash can't stop thinking about the first boy who broke his heart back in middle school and who still lives in town. The novel's power comes from watching a mother and son suffer under such similar burdens while stubbornly refusing to open up to each other. The flaw in Patel's novel is structural more than anything else. The short chapters (some as few as two pages) alternate between Akash's and Renu's narration; they wrestle with such similar burdens, and they're together for so much of the book, that the quick jumps between them keep the reader from sinking into either of their stories. Strong characters and a sharp depiction of familial secrets in a novel that feels too compressed.

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November 1, 2021
Patel's first novel, following the short story collection If You See Me, Don't Say Hi (2018), tells the alternating stories of Akash and his mother, Renu, and their longstanding secrets that have fractured their family relationships. Akash cannot bring his boyfriend home to Illinois for the one-year anniversary of his father's death since neither his mother nor his brother, Bijal, know that he is gay. Renu is returning to London, never truly feeling a sense of belonging in the U.S. and with the outside hope that she may rekindle a never revealed, taboo relationship prior to her arranged marriage. Even Bijal is hiding his truth, as all three characters sidestep each other to keep up appearances. Through flashbacks to Renu's secret affair and Akash's betrayal of his best friend and his continued self-sabotage fueled by drinking, we learn the devastating rifts their lies have created. Patel gently weaves larger issues of racism and homophobia into Renu and Akash's emotionally rich first-person narration. A winner for book clubs and those who enjoy a little heartstring pulling.

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