Anita and Me
Meera Syal
Meera Syal wrote the screenplay of Bahji on the Beach and the script for the television series Goodness Gracious Me. This book made Gill laugh. It's about growing up in a Punjabi family in a village near Wolverhampton. Anita is an English girl who is "a bad influence".
Gill 5/12/99
The book is set in the early 1960s and concerns a girl called Meena (poss
ibly not very different from Meera?) who is not a "good" girl. It is about what it is like to be a little girl (11 years old), getting things slightly wrong, and being puzzled. Meera lives with her family in a village outside Wolverhampton. Her best friend is a monster called Anita, but Meena's parents cannot bring themselves to forbid the friendship.
Meera's cousins, who her parents would like her to befriend, are very well behaved, but they are "framed" for something they didn't do. There is a mystery about the house across the street, which is resolved at the end, but too neatly and not believably for Carolyn. The book kept Carolyn entertained, and the first three-quarters she really enjoyed.
Carolyn 8/10/00
Good in parts. Accurate 1970s pop cultural references (TV, music, clothes). The main character was quite good, a rather mature 12 year old girl who is really quite nasty. Doreen felt there was some silly stuff that the author shouldn't have bothered including. The book is a tremendous advert for the Punjabi way of life, offsetting a very well balanced Indian family against the dysfunctional white families roundabout in the West Midlands where the book is set. Some similar themes to those in "Life isn't all Ha Ha Hee Hee" in that the characters feel most at home and comfortable in their own culture. Doreen would read another book by the same author.
Doreen 25/2/01
By the same author
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.