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The debut novel from the award-winning screenwriter of Bhaji on the Beach. The story of nine-year-old Meena, growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington.
It’s 1972. Meena is nine years old and lives in the village of Tollington, ‘the jewel of the Black Country’. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. As one of the few Punjabi inhabitants of her village, her daily struggle for independence is different from most. She wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities – but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang.
Blonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita’s life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn Anita’s salad days sour.
Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of change.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Resonant!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Anita and Me (Paperback)
This is a very amusing, accurate and clever insight into life as a child in the seventies. I feel that Meera Syal captures exactly how it felt to be an Indian family member in a predominantly white neighbourhood, yet still maintaining the fears, experiences and changes that many girls have to tackle as they approach adolescence. I read "Life is not all Ha Ha Hee Hee" and felt a totally different angle is needed to approach Anita and Me to appreciate the richness of the author's writing in both novels. Money well spent on this novel I think!
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
compelling cultural cookery........A must read......,
By
This review is from: Anita and Me (Paperback)
As someone that grew up in a small rural village in the countryside in the 70's and 80's, this book brings a lot of memories flooding back. Although not from an asian family, there were many comparisons to be made, as where we lived we were "different" to those around us at the time. This work is a masterpiece of playing on the readers childhood memories, our perceptions of things as they were when we were kids, and also tackles some serious issues surrounding racism, the clashes of cultures and how precarious childhood friendships really are....Syal's incisive wit is very evident in this work, in a very amusing, laugh out loud on the tube manner, her hidden "comebacks" on things such as the name of some paint, how culturally bereft some people are and the odd in joke in Punjabi (thanks to my translating friends!) and oh yes the farting belching grandmother over from India really do make this work a very enjoyable read......... To be honest, if books like this were being read in schools today, then the world would be a better place maybe? This is readable by people of any age to be honest.... An absolute must read.........Meera, if ya reading this, a sequal please? As for other comments about the ending from other reviews, i personally believe once again its very apt...... M
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must for anyone who grew up in the 70's.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Anita and Me (Paperback)
A wonderful evocation of childhood in the seventies. I was drawn to this novel as it touched on so many aspects of my own experience of growing up at that time in Britain - although I am white and lived in the westcountry and not near Wolverhampton! Syal hasn't forgotten the universal agonies of childhood and striving to find your way in life - whatever your background or race.The book has some very funny moments but also some very disturbing and upsetting ones. An asian girl growing up in an English rural village - she is desperate to fit in and be accepted. But as she matures she realises the true and more sinister nature of many of those she formerly looks up to. Her struggle to come to terms with this contradiction is moving and powerful but ultimately inspiring. I would recommend this book to anyone who can still remember what it was like to be a child themselves.
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