'The Golden Son' Not Quite Dazzling

From a mere glance at the titles of her two novels—”Secret Daughter” and “The Golden Son”—Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s obsession with the familial becomes apparent. Born and raised in Toronto by Indian expats, Gowda’s literary work is an attempt not only to connect with her homelands (emphasis on the plural), but also to capture the complicated coexistence of conflicting forces. In “The Golden Son,” Gowda focuses on the conflict between familial expectations and the ambiguity of youth, as well as the subtly unnerving tensions that populate the cross-cultural experience. While Gowda strongly delineates her plot and develops her main characters well, the triteness of her language and flatness of her characters often detract from the overarching themes of the novel.

Twenty-something Anil Patel is the titular “Golden Son.” After his father pays for a girl’s life-changing cleft palate surgery, Anil decides to pursue a career in medicine, leaving behind his bucolic existence for the frenetic pace of medical residency in Dallas, Texas. While his future is hazy, Anil’s present is no less uncertain, as he leaves behind an ailing father and a precarious family estate. Meanwhile, Anil’s childhood friend, Leena, is thrust into an arranged marriage with a man she has never met. The alternating duet of Anil and Leena’s stories creates a kaleidoscopic narrative that is rich with insights on Indian and American culture.

Gowda deftly explores this theme without overdramatizing Patel’s struggles. Instead of inundating the reader with endless tragedy, Gowda presents well-curated glimpses into Anil’s daily life, such as his difficulty finding vegetarian foods in the hospital, for one. Even as Anil begins to adjust to American life, his surprise at such prosaic things as iced tea and karaoke are Gowda’s ways of reminding the reader of the struggle of assimilation.

In Gowda’s exploration of culture, marriage is a constant theme. Through his roommates’ romantic entanglements—and eventually his own—Anil explores the paradigm of the proper. Instead of the quiet Indian housewife his parents envision, Anil becomes involved with Amber, an archetypal girl-next-door. Gowda’s technique of exploring cultural differences through marriage is theoretically valid, but her execution is often overdone: The first time Anil visits Amber’s family, they invite him to go hunting in the backcountry. Such a technique often undermines the subtlety that Gowda aims for, instead leaving the reader in a wake of cliches as stifling as the Texas sun.

The title of the book is emblematic of Gowda’s linguistic weakness. She opts for a play on words neither clever nor original enough to sustain the meaning that Gowda places on it. This triteness recurs again and again, especially in romantic relationships: “Amber had been his first kiss, her first sexual experience and his first girlfriend. Now, he knew, she would also be his first heartbreak.” Better yet: “the scent of her was tantalizing.” And still more stale: “he was a dweller of two lands, accepted by none.” And yet, Gowda also manages to draw beautiful material from the mundane with phrases like “the unswallowed pill of regret settling in his throat.”

Gowda’s description of Anil’s father’s shrine provides another unexpected moment of depth: “It was not one of the photos taken shortly before his death, when his face was sunken and his eyes held a look of defeat. Nor had she chosen, as some widows did, a picture from his youth, in which he looked more like a movie star than the man she woke up next to every morning. Mina had selected a picture of Jayant in his early forties, in the prime of his health and life.” In this paragraph, Anil’s mother, formerly the unmitigated force of tradition, gains a believably human dimension.

However, not all the characters receive such well-crafted descriptions; many stagnate in their one-dimensional forms. Neither Anil nor Leena have any glaring flaws or any inner strengths that can be developed throughout the novel. The weak descriptions of Anil and Leena often translate into anemic supporting characters, as Gowda turns to formulaic constructions in order to fill in the novel: the conservative mother, the harsh professor, even the jocular Australian. Perhaps the most convincing supporting characters are Texas and India, as the contrast between the two makes for some of the more gripping dialogues in the novel. Overall, instead of an interestingly jagged surface of idiosyncrasies, Gowda’s characters represent a smoothly perfect sheen. They are solid, but also hollow, and the book eventually relies more on plot than human depth to create interest.

—Staff writer Hanaa Maselmeh can be reached at hanaa.maselmeh@thecrimson.com