126. How To Find What You're Not Looking For

How To Find What You're Not Looking For. Veera Hiranandani. 2021. [September] 384 pages. [Source: Library] 

First sentence: How to be the lazy one. It's harder than you think. First, lie on your messy bed wearing your Wonder Woman pajamas that are too small because you’ve had them since you were nine. Then, watch your older sister, Leah, pin up her hair for dance class. She sits in her black leotard at the small white vanity, her back straight as a board, a magazine cutout of Paul Newman taped to the corner of her mirror. She uses at least fifteen bobby pins for her bun. Count in your head while she sticks the pins in. One, two, three. She’s rushing because she has to be on the #4 bus by 9:00 a.m. for pointe class at Madame Duchon’s Dance Academy. She dances there every day except Sunday. You’re not even sure how she spends so much time at dance and still does well in school. Leah seems to do well at everything. Not you. You’re the lazy one. You’re just trying to keep up, but along with all the other things Leah does, she helps you keep up.

Premise/plot: Ariel Goldberg stars in Veera Hiranandani's How To Find What You're Not Looking For. The theme of 'how-to' continues beyond the title. Each chapter begins with a 'how-to' title. The first chapter being titled, "How to Be the Lazy One." The book is written in second person present tense, to "you." Ariel and Leah are sisters, and perhaps surprisingly close considering the seven years age difference. But when Leah falls in love with an Indian boy--as opposed to a JEWISH boy--bonds of all sorts are tested.

The novel is set circa 1967/68. It focuses on home and school, and all the DRAMA that occurs.

My thoughts: I really loved, loved, loved this one. Despite the second person present tense! I thought the characterization was great--very lovely. I thought the details were good. It was well-paced; it kept me reading. I love the writing. Very quotable. I also love the fact that writing poetry helps Ariel make sense of life. 

One of Ariel's poems:

The Ways of the World

The world has many ways

of spinning.

Many I don’t understand.

But love

is not that hard

to understand.

Doesn’t it just spin one way,

one person toward another,

without stopping?

Quotes:

Keeping a secret is not your favorite thing to do. Secrets make your stomach hurt. You can count on one hand the secrets you’ve kept. You once took a report card out of the mailbox and hid it in your schoolbag for a week. But you got caught. Sometimes when you hang out with your friend Jane, you make it seem like you have other friends. But you don’t. Occasionally you steal cookies from Gertie’s and keep them in a coffee can in your room. You’ve never had to keep a really big secret before, and certainly not forever.

Leah’s cheeks get blotchy, and her eyes start to fill again with tears. “Oh please,” she says. “I have to tell someone, and I need it to be you.” Leah saying she needs you—is there anything more special than that? Maybe if you know her secret, some of her specialness will spill over onto you. She bites her lip and grabs your hand.

You read the title on the album: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. You wonder what it means. Were the Beatles changing their name? Your hands feel sticky with ice cream. You press your thumb and forefinger together, and they stay stuck that way.

“I’m just so happy. I don’t want anything to ruin it. I feel guilty about being so happy.”

“Why would you feel guilty about being happy?” you ask.

“Because there’s so much wrong with the world,” she says and starts walking again.

There is, according to the newspapers. But you look around your town. You see someone driving by in a blue Chevy convertible. You see people walking down the block in sunglasses, sipping soda pop, riding their bikes, happy to be out on such a nice Saturday. This world seems okay.

“Do you know what happened at Rocky’s last week? A guy came in and heard Raj talking. Then he asked John, the manager, why he had foreigners working there and not Americans. He asked Raj if he was here legally. Raj said he was a US citizen, and the fellow demanded to see proof and wouldn’t leave! John had to threaten to call the cops until he finally left.”

“Gosh, that’s terrible,” you say. Now she’s walking so quickly, you can barely keep up.

“But our love is stronger than the racist establishment.”

“ ‘The racist establishment,’ ” you say, trying out her words.

How’s my muffin?” he asks.

“I’m all right,” you say and stuff the rest of the bread in your mouth. “Same as always.”

Daddy nods. “Me too, Muffin,” he says. “Same old, same old.”

This is what you and Daddy always say to each other after school. And every day, you know that you are not the same and neither is he. When you and Ma get back to the apartment, you go into your bedroom and take a sniff of the Chanel No. 5 perfume on the dresser, a sixteenth birthday gift that Ma gave Leah. The apartment used to smell of it when Leah was still here, along with her Breck shampoo, but you didn’t notice until she was gone and the smell faded away.

A little part of you still hopes you’ll find her sitting on her yellow-and-white bedspread, playing the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Or maybe even the Doors real quiet because Ma hates the Doors.

 

Ma does get headaches a lot. She calls them migraines and says she even sees flashes of color before they start. That sounds sort of magical to you rather than painful, but Ma sure does seem like she’s in a lot of pain when she gets them. Since Leah left, it’s been happening more often.

“Sorry, I mean your mom,” you say.

“It’s all right,” she says and is quiet for another few seconds. “He left my mom when he found out she was pregnant. They weren’t even married. And he never came back. My mom always tells people he’s dead.”

Now it’s your turn to be quiet.

“I was always afraid to ask. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” you say after a moment.

Jane shakes her head. “It’s okay. I don’t think about it that much. I never knew him, but I also don’t think my mom would care if I married someone Jewish. I guess most people aren’t like Peggy, though.”

Suddenly you feel the shape of your friendship with Jane changing, in a good way, like chocolate chips melting into a cookie as it bakes.

“The words I wrote might mean something different to you.”

Miss Field sits back in her chair and crosses her arms.

“They might,” she says.

“I don’t want them to. I want them to mean to you exactly what they mean to me.”

“That makes sense,” she says and pauses for a moment. “But that’s art, Ariel. It’s your gift to the world. People will see what they need to see. Sometimes it will mean to them exactly what it meant to you. Those people are your soul mates.”

© 2021 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews