If You See Me, Don't Say Hi

May 14, 2018
The 11 seemingly casual and quietly feverish stories in Patel’s debut follow the plight of young first- or second-generation Indian-Americans. Some characters are gay and some straight, but most of them have grown up in suburban Midwest towns where they are viewed as vaguely exotic as, in an effort to find love, they struggle to please or break away from their families. Expected to become doctors or lawyers, they often rebel in sneaky or ineffective ways. In the wrenching “Just a Friend,” 22-year-old bartender Jonathan falls for, and completely fails to understand, the much older, anxious immigrant Ashwin, who wears expensive clothes and conceals or lies about most of the details of his life. In the title story, the narrator and his older brother, Deepak, move from a close friendship to a state of war over the decades, as Deepak flunks out of a “marginally rated college,” joining his disappointed parents in running the motel they own, while the narrator goes to medical school. “World Famous” is told from the point of view of a member of an ill-fated couple: Ankur, a medical student from a wealthy family, is attracted to his former high school classmate Anjali, whose family is upwardly aspiring, but their relationship is doomed because of their class discrepancy. Patel has a knack for depicting the gap between how characters experience their lives and how they are expected to be seen—and how those gaps can widen into life-changing fractures. This is a perceptive, moving collection.

Starred review from May 15, 2018
Always thoughtful and often aching, the 11 sharp stories in Patel's debut find his characters--mostly first-generation Indian-Americans; usually young, or youngish; often in Midwestern cities--navigating love, loss, and disappointment.In "god of destruction," which opens the collection, an unhappy interior designer has a one-night stand with the 22-year-old cable guy after a botched internet date. "No one ever told me that happiness was like a currency: that when it goes, it goes, and that few people are willing to give you some of theirs," she reflects. Later, she'll write the incident out of her history. In "just a friend," a 22-year-old college dropout meets a handsome married dentist at a Chicago gay bar only to find out, after a romantic weekend together, that the man isn't who he seems. The title story is both the simplest and the showstopper, about the troubled relationship between two brothers, told from the perspective of the high-achieving youngest, now a doctor. It's an empathetic family portrait, exquisitely subtle, without villains; their falling out, when it happens, triggered by a comment over a white girlfriend, is about nothing and also everything. The silence between them lasts for 10 years. The collection ends with an unexpected pair of linked stories following a boy and a girl who met as kids and again as adults, both of them having become items of community gossip. When they reconnect in their Illinois hometown, in his story, she's newly and scandalously divorced; he hasn't matched for a residency after medical school. Her story picks up years later, after both of them have achieved something like success. At the core of Patel's stories is a sense of loss, more powerful for its quiet restraint. Not every story is an equal knockout, which is a hazard of the format, but Patel's deep sense of empathy--and infuriatingly relatable characters--shines throughout.A melancholic pleasure with a sense of humor.

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June 1, 2018
Debut-author Patel's 10 compact yet meaty stories feature characters?most of them first-generation Indian Americans, as the author is?trying to navigate a world full of expectations (go to college, land a prestigious job, get married, have children) only to find themselves continually thwarted. Like the young man in the story Just a Friend, who finds himself in a seemingly perfect, whirlwind relationship with an older man, and soon discovers that nothing is what it seems. Or the woman who is dating the right man (one her parents approve of) yet seeks out a one-night stand with the Wi-Fi fix-it guy. Several of the stories deal with young love, of the kind where characters imagine themselves together forever only to end up strangers (hence the book's title). Patel explores universal themes in unexpected ways and excels at portraying nuanced characters in even the briefest stories. Readers in search of a fresh new voice should be on the lookout for Patel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)