Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love

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I take occasional digs on here at the hype which pervades Twitter where every book is super fabulous but it has to be said I’m often grateful when a book is flagged I might have otherwise missed. The final tale, The Wishes, is about a woman who longs to become a mother and her superstition in which she makes thousands of cranes to make her wish come true. Not only that— i experienced the angst of teenage love all over again; falling in love during the summer, and getting heartbroken by fall; peacefully outgrowing my friendships and leaving them in my past; encountering a past flame, and attaining closure after all these years; falling out of love from a seemingly-perfect marriage; and even the utter joy of childbirth after waiting for so long to conceive. There is a sense relatability particularly in the way families, tradition and expectations from the older generations versus new were written. Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love strikingly encapsulates a major theme of the book: the inability to communicate honestly with the most important people in your life.

A series of beautifully written short stories examining the pent-up frustrations and the everyday betrayals that even our closest relationships can cause. Another unimpressive story is Foreign Parts, about a British man who is engaged to a Pakistani woman who he finds to be a completely different person in her home country. In I'm A Fan, a single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithful relationship as a prism through which to examine the complicated hold we each have on one another. I would recommend this highly, particularly if you’ve enjoyed short stories written by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Set in numerous locations, London, rural England, Tuscany, and Lahore, we have a young girl building up a covert relationship of longing with a boy, where little is said, that culminates in her being punished in a community where the reputation of girls and women can be so easily besmirched by rumours and lies. The book’s characters are Asian or in cross-cultural relationships, and yet race is only one aspect of their lives.

Just like love itself, her stories are full of honesty and mystery, pain and hope, and the memories we think we've forgotten, but that still steer our hearts. There are the lies, secrets, despair, love, loneliness, loss, grief and silence that many readers will relate to, particularly as there is a universality that crosses cultural boundaries when it comes to the nature of human relationships, repeating themselves in their many forms throughout our history.I also appreciate how each story examines the different ways love can turn sour in our relationships— be it platonic, romantic, friendship, etc. Exhausted mothers, frustrated women and lovers in crisis make up the characters of Huma Qureshi’s short story collection, Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love, which marks the journalist’s first foray into fiction. Her immersive, poignant stories - written mostly in understated prose - often have a sting in the tale .