The novel Hashim & Family is set between the years 1960 and 1982, and spans two countries; what becomes Bangladesh, and England. It’s the story of an immigrant, Bangladeshi-Irish family through the generations, following the struggles they face living in the UK. The novel is, according to the author, the story of her grandparents’ generation.
Shahnaz Ahsan says of writing it: “I wrote this book because I was tired of browsing shelves in bookshops and not finding any stories that reflected my heritage, my family’s history, which has so much in common with the experiences of other migrant families. In the current climate of hostility towards migrants in the West, it is crucial that the stories of these families are told and celebrated. We have a right to be in Britain.”
Unfortunately, the story of immigrants coming to the UK offered in Hashim & Family lacks any real insight into what that experience might be like
This is a noble intention, and worthwhile. It is undeniably true that there has been an enormous upsurge in political resistance, and even violence, towards immigrants in the West over the past number of years; Brexit and the election of Donald Trump being only the most obvious manifestations.
Unfortunately, the story of immigrants coming to the UK offered in Hashim & Family lacks any real insight into what that experience might be like. There is, throughout the novel, the projection of an essentially English subjectivity on each of the characters therein. This feels reductive.
Every character seems to have the same underlying morals and ethics, specifically those that might belong to a person raised in the UK at this particular moment in time (ie we are presented with characters who are all striving to be “good” as goodness is currently perceived, not evincing any small hint of the idiosyncrasies a reader might expect to find in people from such hugely varying backgrounds, cultures and generations).
They are all, in short, to a greater or lesser extent liberal feminists, without any hint of in-built racial bias. They’re all exceptionally nice people. And as lovely as they are, this fact denies the possibility within the novel of any real complexity in terms of intercultural understanding, because it disregards the very real contrasts in the thought patterns and ethical constructs of different national identities.
The characters offered in this book are too cohesively similar in their outlooks, which proves to over-simplify rather than effectively capture the mental and practical difficulties of immigrant populations.
While there are moments of real pathos in the novel, the dialogue and thoughts of the characters are often trite. At her father’s funeral, Helen, an Irish woman, thinks: “It rained at every funeral she had ever attended . . . It was quite unnecessary really, given that the mourners would usually be sad enough without having the added trauma of raindrops trickling under collars and muddied wet feet.” Later, when watching her friend get ready to go meet the men, she thinks: “How ridiculous it was that women had to go through such time-consuming preparations before daring to venture out in public. Still, that was the way it was.” Clichés like these, of which there are many, inevitably slacken the momentum of the book.
What Hashim & Family does offer, in spite of Ahsan’s declaration of intent, is a conventional novel of family life. It is, in its use of highly familiar character types and storytelling tropes, utterly traditional. The characters have all been met before, dotted throughout the canon, and, while they are certainly likeable, their unwavering predictability, both in actions and morality, leaves the book sorely lacking that which all novels ought to offer; something, even just a little bit, new.
The leading women, especially, are described in predictable terms, remaining just the right side of relatable – the young Helen repeatedly brings to mind Bridget Jones, while her feisty, curvy, part-Italian best friend is described as being “loyal as a dog”. Rofikul, the one character who behaves badly, does so unconvincingly, and is suitably contrite by the end (again, reading him, one thinks of a less charming, less believable, Daniel Cleaver).
Hashim & Family is, in many ways pleasantly comforting, in that it is like a book read many times before. There are gently predictable plot twists, touching friendships, heartaches and, on top of it all, a gentle sprinkling of historical and political education. It isn’t offensive, in fact it’s impossible to hate (although that might’ve proved a little more exhilarating).
It’s a perfectly fine book, written by a perfectly capable writer with perfectly good intentions. Yet, the author clearly has skill, and does manage to tell a rather grand and complex story (putting aside some mismatched timespans and quite a bit of needless repetition) with humour and compassion. It’s a shame, really, that it doesn’t manage to offer more, as truly insightful and elucidating stories of immigrants’ lives in the West certainly do urgently need to be told, and retold, again and again.
