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When I Open the Shop
When I Open the Shop | Romesh Dissanayake
1 post | 1 read | 3 to read
In his small noodle shop in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a young chef obsessively juliennes carrots. Nothing is going according to plan: the bills are piling up, his mother is dead, and there are strangers in his kitchen. The ancestors are watching closely. Told through a series of brilliant interludes and jump cuts, When I open the shop is sometimes blackly funny, sometimes angry and sometimes lyrical, and sometimes - as a car soars off the road on a horror road trip to the Wairarapa - it takes flight into surrealism. A glimpse into immigrant life in Aotearoa, this is a highly entertaining, surprising and poignant debut novel about grief, struggle and community.
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ClairesReads
When I Open the Shop | Romesh Dissanayake
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A quiet little gem about grief, belonging and otherness, identity, and connection. I don‘t think anything can say in my review would accurately capture how carefully, and subtly these ideas are explored. But the writing is measured, and pitch perfect, and this story is so alive in its depiction of people and places. A wonderful novel.

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