Synopses & Reviews
Gabriel's father, a washed-up rock musician, has been chucked out of the house. His mother works nights in a pub and sleeps days. Navigating his way through the shattered world of his parents' generation, Gabriel dreams of being an artist. He finds solace and guidance through a mysterious connection to his deceased twin brother, Archie, and his own knack for producing real objects simply by drawing them.
A chance visit with mega-millionaire rock star Lester Jones, his father's former band mate, provides Gabriel with the means to heal the rift within his family. Kureishi portrays Gabriel's naïve hope and artistic aspirations with the same insight and searing honesty that he brought to the Indian-Anglo experience in The Buddha of Suburbia and to infidelity in Intimacy. Gabriel's Gift is a humorous and tender meditation on failure, redemption, the nature of talent, the power of imagination and a generation that never wanted to grow up, seen through the eyes of their children.
Review
"Gabriel's Gift is a soft, light and springy novel, one with such a cautiously happy ending that you could almost call it a fairy tale. (In that respect, it's the kind of book you might expect Kureishi to write after the devastatingly mournful Intimacy.) With as much tenderness as bite, Gabriel's Gift makes the case for hanging onto parts of the past the tricky part is knowing which ones are worth keeping...." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)
About the Author
Hanif Kureishi won England's prestigious Whitbread Prize for his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia. He received an Oscar nomination for his first screenplay, My Beautiful Laundrette. Kureishi is also the author of The Black Album and Love in a Blue Time, as well as of the films, Sammy and Rose Get Laid, London Kills Me, and My Son the Fanatic. His second collection of stories, Midnight All Day, has just been published in one volume along with his controversial 1999 novel, Intimacy, which has been adapted for the screen. Kureishi lives in London.