September 27, 2024

I Never Said I Was Brave, by Tasneem Jamal

There is so much to wonder about in Tasneem Jamal’s new novel, I NEVER SAID THAT I WAS BRAVE, a strange and compelling story of a complicated friendship between two women whose families were connected in Kitchener’s Ugandan-Indian community after arriving in Canada in the 1970s. Not least of all, what the narrator’s name is, as she takes us through the years of her friendship with Miriam, from their time together as children to their relationship as adults—the narrator flounders in academic, Miriam becomes an astrophysicist who studies dark matter. The narrator’s address is very intimate, her story seemingly meandering as she moves back and forth in time, and across the country too—but what is she hiding from us? What is left unsaid? Why does she frame her story precisely the way she does? How much can we rely on the narrator to tell us who Miriam was, as she describes her friend’s complicated relationships, the way she absorbed so much light, leaving everybody else in shadow. And why does she tell us so little of herself? In some ways, though this novel is far from gothic, I NEVER SAID THAT I WAS BRAVE reminded me of Daphne Du Maurier’s REBECCA, another novel of obsession in which the narrator obfuscates and hides.