Book Review: Someone You Love is Gone

Someone You Love is Gone
By Gurjinder Basran
Penguin Random House

Gurjinder Basran grew up in North Delta, British Columbia. Her first novel, Everything was Good-bye, was the winner of both the Great BC Novel Search, in 2010, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Award, in 2011.
Everything Was Good-bye was the story of a young woman raised in Metro Vancouver in a family that immigrated to Canada from India. Her rebellion from her family’s traditional ways was the heart of the novel, which was in many ways a classic coming-of-age story.
In Someone You Love is Gone, Basran goes deeper. This time around, the main character is Simran, the mother of a grown daughter whose own mother has just died. Simran is struggling to cope with the loss of her mother, particularly because there are family secrets. And Simran may be the only person left who remembers those secrets.
The secret concerns her brother, who is estranged from her family, and who may or may not remember a past life.
Simran’s marriage is in trouble, perhaps only because of the death of her mother, but perhaps for deeper reasons.
Basran has done a really nice job with this novel – she has captured a culture and a tone that Canadians will recognize, but that they would also do well to learn more about. But that’s just an added bonus in a story that would resonate if it were about any culture.
The story is split into three timelines – the present, Simran’s childhood, and her mother’s early adulthood — and set in both Canada and India, This heartbreaking and haunting story includes love, loss, family honour and family rejection; it will make you both laugh and cry.
Someone You Love is Gone is a quick read – I read it in a single afternoon, but it stayed with me much longer.
Basran is going to be talking about her book at the Vancouver Writers Festival this fall, in two events, one about marriages the other about ghosts.
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