Corner Shop - Hardcover

Farooki, Roopa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312375565 ISBN 13: 9780312375560

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2009

Synopsis

There are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting your heart's desire - and the other? Getting it. Fourteen-year-old Lucky Khalil loves three things: football, Star Wars and Portia, the girl who works in his grandfather's corner shop. In that order. But Lucky has a destiny – worse than a destiny, he has a dream. He dreams that one day, his lucky left foot will win the World Cup for England . It torments him, because it tastes real, because when he wakes he weeps with disappointment that it is just a dream.

Meanwhile, Lucky’s mother Delphine seems to have had all her dreams come true.  But Delphine feels increasingly trapped in her apparently perfect marriage and gilded lifestyle. She fantasizes about rediscovering the freedom of her youth, but rekindling a relationship with her maverick father-in-law, Zaki, is only going to end in disaster.

Zaki, a charming gambler who loved and lost Delphine long before she married his sensible and successful son, feels equally trapped in the corner shop that he has unwillingly run for years for his family's sake.  He wonders whether the time has come to abandon his middle class responsibilities, to try once more to achieve his own long-forgotten dreams.

 As each of the Khalils discovers in Roopa Farooki’s beautifully written and richly layered tale, the closer one's dreams become, the more risk there is of losing sight of what really matters.

About this title

About the Author

Roopa Farooki was born in Lahore, Pakistan , and brought up in London. She graduated from New College, Oxford in 1995 and worked in advertising before writing fiction full time. Roopa now lives in Southeast England and Southwest France with her husband and two sons. Her first novel, Bitter Sweets, was nominated for the Orange Award for New Writers.

Reviews

Like her delightful first novel, Bitter Sweets (2007), Farooki’s second is a multi-generational tale about the struggle to achieve a dream and the reality that follows even the most amazing accomplishment. Zaki defied his father and married a beautiful young pregnant widow, only to find himself widowed a few years later and forced to accept his father’s offer to run a small shop in London. Zaki’s daughter-in-law—and former lover—Delphine has everything she thought she wanted: a loving husband and a smart, ambitious son, but she finds herself longing for the passion she shared with Zaki. Her 15-year-old son, Lucky, is an aspiring footballer, but he’s chagrined when his coach puts him in the goalie box. Still, Lucky finds love with his dream girl and success on the football field, growing ever closer to his dream to be on England’s World Cup team. A complex exploration of the ever-changing nature of wants and desires and the consequences of achieving one’s dreams, Farooki’s tale eschews easy answers for the complex, appealing characters that people its pages. --Kristine Huntley

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312375565
• ISBN 13: 9780312375560
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368