I was really looking forward to reading this. The blurb intrigued me and I loved the bright cover. I’m so disappointed the content didn’t live up to the premise. After reading the blurb I expected the book to focus on the lives of immigrants, struggling to find a place in a big city. I expected the book to deal with marginalised society. I also expected the book to be very relevant and current to today’s world and recent events. Not so much. The premise is a great one and it’s clear where the author wanted to go. It’s just not executed very well. The characters are very poor, flat and bland. I struggled to get to know or connect with any of them and as a consequence felt little sympathy. The plot is far too simple and has no real depth – people say what they mean in simple terms and there’s no hidden meaning. This wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either.

Ooh, this book is a real disappointment. And that makes me sad as there is no doubt that the plot and themes sound both interesting and necessary. Nikita has set her novel around an Italian restaurant in London – the Pizzeria Vesuvio; only the chefs are Sri Lankan rather than Italian and half the staff are illegal immigrants. For this is a book that sets out to platform and examine the desperate situations faced by those here illegally – what they are fleeing and what they face – with the aim of shedding light (and generating sympathy and understanding) for the lives of those who come to us from the most awful places.

However, though the ides are excellent, the execution is poor. The characters are poorly represented – two dimensional caricatures rather than people with depth and contradictions, the plot is facile and simplistic, subtext is completely absent – everyone seems to say what they mean with all language on the nose – and too often there’s uncomfortable lurid purple prose.

When it comes to contemporary novels about those living, often forgotten and overlooked, in the margins, the standout example to me is always the award-winning The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney who set her novel in Cork. None of that brilliance – a curious cast of characters with competing motivations and conflict set against a society that is, itself, falling apart – can be found in these pages, sadly.

Great idea but not a good novel.

Story about life on the margins in London . Nia, Welsh, mixed race ,university dropout with an abusive alcoholic mother and a vulnerable younger sister who she worries about has escaped to London to make a new life . Shan ,a Tamil who fled Sri Lanka ,leaving his family behind ,when his father was killed, is working illegally whilst awaiting a decision on his immigration status . TBoth work in Vesuvio ,a pseudo Italian restaurant staffed mainly by illegal immigrants run by Tuli . The characters are well fleshed out and as the novel progresses you begin to wonder if everything is at it seems . Tuli is a complicated character ,seemingly friendly but distant ,something niggles away as you read more of the story .Is Tuli as benevolent as he first seems? He hides his workers when immigration raids take place, lends them money ,treats them well but where does the money come from and what is his connection to the traffickers ?
.Nia , as the only white face in the pizzeria, doesn’t suffer the racial abuse that the other workers do .The work opens her eyes to the treatment of non white immigrants in modern day Britain and the lengths some go to to get here . A novel for our times .

You People takes the reader into the uncertain and insecure world of illegal immigrants living in London.
Tuli, a Sri Lankan, manages a pseudo-Italian restaurant "Vesuvio", with most of the chefs and staff being given work to support them whilst seeking citizenship in the country. The gradual introduction to Ava, Shan and the other workers at the restaurant via character chapters help build a picture of living day to day, hand to mouth with the constant threat of raids to deport. Nobody would choose this life if they didn't have a good reason to be escaping a greater threat.
Although Tuli is seen as the good Samaritan, helping all he can to get on their feet, Nia, a national and worker at Vesuvio, is suspicious of where his funds come from to bail these people out. We never get a clear answer, but the case is made that where possible, people need to help other people. Nia also asks how do you decide who is deserving of support. How do you know that their claims are genuine? This is compared to the judiciary passing judgement on refugees with stories of rape and torture passed over because they lack credibility.
In helping Shan to be re-united with his wife and son, however, Tuli becomes out of his depth and the cruel callousness of individuals making a profit out of other people's desperation and the blind trust that has to be put into strangers hands is highlighted. This thread of the story ramps up the pace in the second half of the book.
All the characters are well developed and you feel empathy for their situation, and ignorance (in a large part via omission in the media) on the circumstances that lead people to flee their homes and careers for safety.
The title is ambiguous: it can be taken as all immigrants, lumped together as if they are all similar, or UK citizen's - quick to judge and voice hatred with no thought to circumstances (a woman berates Shan on the bus and apologises later, saying it was due to her son's illness but with no awareness as to Shan's traumas).
What is clear is that Lalwani loves the english language and her prose is scattered with wonderful choices of words, like flowers in a hedge.

You People by Nikita Lalwani is a well-told story of people fleeing persecution by abusive parents or vengeful governments, rescued and taken in by Tuli, a London restaurateur. The novel examines morality, legality and truth-telling and how those things can and should be flexible when lives are at stake. What is the best thing to do considering all the facts? What would you do if it was you or your loved ones?

The book was set at an unusual time in Britain - post-911, but pre-Brexit. Immigration and race were starting to become hot political topics, but I don't think it was as toxic an atmosphere then for non-Middle Eastern immigrants. I'd like to know how the characters are doing in 2020, maybe that's an idea for a sequel?

A recommended, thought-provoking read.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Tuli runs a London restaurant in which he employs people based largely on his gut instinct of how much they need work. As a result quite a few of his employees are illegal immigrants. By all counts he seems to be a generous and caring employer but we're left in some doubt as to whether the restaurant is his only source of income. His readiness to step in and help his staff with their personal problems definitely makes this a "feel good" read and the storyline is readily believable. Nikita Lilwani has authored a novel that deals sensitively with the difficult issues faced not only by immigrants but also UK nationals from broken families. An author to watch.

In You People Nikita Lalwani writes about immigrant experience with a poetic touch, exploring weighty themes such as trust and morality with a deft and compelling honesty.

It's pretty slow paced - far more focused on characterisation than plot. Lalwani paints an immersive picture of early-noughties London, her understated imagery bringing the world to life in all its grit and beauty. I was so swept up in the heart of it that the ending seems to come on too fast. The structure falls away towards the end, and the character development never feels fully resolved, so the story seems to end on an imperfect cadence. I wasn't expecting a happy ending, but I felt I was left with more answers than questions: the enigmatic Tulli is as much of a mystery at the end of the novel as he is at the beginning.

You People is an intelligent and thought-provoking slow-burner of a novel, a vibrant and vital read for 2020.

Thank you to Penguin/Viking and NetGalley for an early copy of You People.

This was a wonderfully thought provoking and engaging read. A little more slow paced than I was expecting but I think this really helped to flesh out the characters and add to the day-to-day realism of this book.

You People follows Nia and Shan, two vastly different characters that happen to work at the same restaurant. The book weaves in the stories of the other employees working at the restaurant - and their much beloved boss - and you begin to see how many lives that appear different on the surface share a lot of the same struggles and hopes.

If you want a masterfully character driven look at immigration and the life of those living with the true terror of deportation then pick this one up. Definitely a worthy read - especially now.

3.5/5

A little disappointed by this book. The description promised a thrilling plot and instead I felt it moved a little slowly and I would have liked a tighter storyline with clear developments for each character as well as finding out more about one of the main character's motivations.
While the premise of the book - seeing Britain from the point of those who are fighting to stay in the country, who find refuge and who are living every day worrying about being found out - is interesting, it is only a small part of the story. Everything else was a little convoluted and I didn't connect with the characters.

Thank you to Netgalley for this advanced reader's copy in return for my honest review. Thought provoking and well written. A book for our times with a modern and challenging topic.

What a thought provoking read. I truly enjoyed this book and feel more educated for reading it. I hope it gets the press and attention it deserves.

Thoroughly recommend.

A timely, finely-wrought novel about people living in the margins, relying on people who are more likely to harm than help. Lalwani's close and accurate observations of the tiny shifts in feeling that persuade you to trust, when everything tells you not to, is masterly.

Tuli, of Sri Lankan descent himself, is the strangely compelling master of the environment he's created in the Pizzeria Vesuvio and he's closely observed by the two characters who share the narrative, 19-year old Nia, escaped from her chaotic home life Wales; and Shan, who's escaped the terror of Sri Lanka, leaving behind his wife and son. The two of them circle around Tuli, who conjures cash and arranges loans with a seemingly casual air. It feels as if he's kindness itself, and yet the power-relations are toxic. The tension that feeds the narrative is Shan's agonising quest to connect with his wife and child, and the horrifying insecurity of his life as an undocumented immigrant. Nia's struggles are to reconcile the way she's abandoned her sister and alcoholic mother and flunked her Oxford degree course to end up in the Pizzeria, and to find some way of understanding just who Tuli is. What does he do, exactly, to make this hold he has on the crowd of vulnerable, courageous people who work in the Pizzeria? It's a complex relationship that develops between Tuli and Nia and I liked the way it grazed the edges of being a love story, without falling into that cliche.

Persevere beyond the first quarter of the book. There's a little too much backstory running free of narrative tension here, but the impetus to read fast builds quickly once Nia gets more involved in Shan's quest and Tuli's apparent helpfulness.

Lalwani is master of the well-turned metaphor or simile: 'The waiting has quickly become like cling film over his daily life'; 'she carries the night itself away with her, the whole grey sky could be a fairy-tale cloak on her back'. Details of the way people permanently on the brink of disaster, who've suffered unspeakable misery to reach this uncomfortable point, are brilliantly observed, carefully rendered, and there is enough contrast between comfort and despair, and great literary skill, to make the read a real enjoyment. This could become a classic. It deserves to be a great success.

Thanks to Netgalley, Penguin and Viking for the chance to read this prior to publication.

You People is a timely, state of the nation novel about people living on the margins of society. It explores moral choices they face as they attempt to give meaning to their lives. The story is set in 2003 in a south London pizzeria where the two narrators, Nia, a young Welsh-Indian woman and Shan, a Tamil immigrant work.

Nia’s story looks back to her past. Growing up in extreme poverty with a younger sister and emotionally abused by her alcoholic mother, Nia studied hard and managed to get into Oxford, only to drop out after a year because she couldn’t quite leave her needy mother and vulnerable sister behind. On moving to London, she resolves to distance herself but can’t stop worrying about her sister.

Shan left Sri Lanka after the murder of his father, a prominent journalist, leaving his wife and son behind, hoping to reunite with them once he’s settled and created a new life for them in the West. Only things don’t go to plan, he is an illegal immigrant, struggling to survive and getting into debt, unable to get in touch with his family back home.

Tuli is the owner of the pizzeria, known in the local community as the man to turn to when you need help. He is a larger than life, morally ambiguous character who can give you a loan, help with an asylum application, finding work or somewhere to live. He exploits the legal system as much as he can in order to help others but also for personal gain. Nia is fascinated by him and decides she wants to help but struggles with the resulting moral choices. “What about the basic idea of just being there, just taking part, responding to need, not walking on by. To be present rather than absent, to forgo being a bystander?” says Tuli during one of their conversations. This is where the novel’s strength lies, in asking uncomfortable questions and bringing to attention the hardships of migrants and people whose lives are a constant struggle with uncertainty, anxiety and basic survival. At the same time, I felt Nia was more fully realised than Shan and especially Tuli whose motives remain somewhat ambiguous.

You People is a thought provoking novel and I hope it gets attention and readership for the issues it raises. Aside from the plight of migrants, it also touches on privilege and class, suggested by the title. Lalwani’s treatment of characters is humane and her writing wonderfully cinematic in scene setting and detail.

My thanks to Netgalley, Penguin and Viking for the opportunity to read You People.

Nia is a young Welsh woman who has dropped out of Oxford and is working in Vesuvio, a cheap Italian restaurant in London. She is of mixed Welsh and Indian heritage, but she is firmly a UK national.

Shan, working in the same restaurant, is Tamil and having his application for residency processed. He is not allowed to work. He dreams of bringing his family over from Sri Lanka.

Most of Nia and Shan’s co-workers are undocumented or illegal workers, always keeping one ear open for an Immigration Service raid.

The linchpin for the story is Tuli, the owner of Vesuvio. Tuli is a curious character. He loans money and pays debts; he facilitates people trafficking; he employs illegal workers. He could be seen to exploit desperate people, but equally, he is able to persuade himself and others that he is some kind of saviour figure rescuing those in the time of greatest need. It’s never clear to the reader which side of the divide he falls, or even whether there really is a divide. Is that a metaphor for all of us - liking to do good but essentially looking after ourselves?

The structure of the novel can seem a bit clunky. Nia and Shan narrate separate sections, and for much of the beginning their stories don’t really intersect - so a dual storyline. Then when they do converge, the chopping from one perspective to the other makes the novel feel a bit blocky when it might have been smother to be able to keep popping back and forth in paragraphs.

There is also a fairly significant plot issue where Shan is required to be unable to seek treatment from the health service. But, having applied for residence, he surely would have had access to proper healthcare...

Nevertheless, the story is engaging and Nia, as a terminal underachiever, is an engaging character. I have met Nias. Shan is harder to know. Although there is a bit of backstory, it doesn’t quite define Shan as a person, more as a refugee. I suspect that like Nia, Shan was supposed to come across as a man with way more potential than he could use in a pizza joint, and that we could compare the different journeys that had brought them to this pass. Shan’s route being one of ambition and a desire to improve his situation; Nia’s as one of running away from opportunity.

You People does have plenty to think about, not least in considering the scale of investment that families are prepared to make for a journey of illegal migration and what seems to be a precarious and impoverished existence. But I think there is a deeper story to be told in terms of how people like Tuli reconcile their morals with their deeds.

Given Britain’s political climate (in other words: the madness of Brexit) Nikita Lalwani’s You People is a poignant and incredibly relevant novel. Set in London Lalwani’s story takes place in 2003 (get ready for some nokia-related nostalgia) and focuses on Nia and Shan, respectively a waitress and a cook, both of whom work at Pizzeria Vesuvio.

Although her father is Bengali nineteen-year old Nia ‘passes’ for white and is often mistaken for Italian. Having been raised by her Welsh mother Nia has never been in contact with her father or his culture. After years of putting up with her mother’s spiraling mental health and alcoholism Nia is eager to leave her hometown. University however doesn’t go as planned and she flees to London.
With a few white lies on her part Nia is hired by Tuli the owner of Pizzeria Vesuvio and soon she is enthralled by him. Yet Tuli—a Tamil who grew up in Singapore—with his philanthropist ways seems too good to be true. How can he afford to help so many other people? Why do people go to him?

Having left his wife and son behind, Shan, a Tamil from Sri Lanka, is wrecked by guilt. His passage to Europe doesn’t go as planned and he falls more and more into debt. While at first, out of naïveté or perhaps desperation, he believes that he can at a later date be joined by his wife and son, once in London, he realises that the agents who organised his ‘trip’ are little more than conmen. London too isn't the city he'd envisioned and he finds it hard to make enough money to survive each week, let alone pay his debts or the passage of his loved ones. It is Tuli, his new boss, who comes to his aid.

Unlike Tuli’s other employers Nia has never been subjected to xenophobia or racism. While her life has been less than ideal—punctuated by poverty, emotional neglect and abuse—she has a simplistic view of immigrants and her government, and it in her time at the Pizzeria Vesuvio Tuli challenges her idealistic notions. Nia is shocked to learn of what Shan was subjected to in Sri Lanka and that for him to be an ‘illegal’ immigrant is better than the alternative, which may be death, torture, or imprisonment.

Yet, in spite of their different backgrounds and circumstances, both Nia and Shan are wracked by guilt. They both left someone behind in order to survive. As the novel progresses their two narratives become entwined with each other.

What stands out in Lalwani’s novel is the ambience and imagery that are the backdrop to Nia, Shan, and Tuli’s lives. Through the scenes as the Pizzeria and the ones that take place on London’s busy roads, Lalwani’s creates a portrait of community life. Her ear for accents and mannerism brings to life many different people and their cultures.

The unease that pervades Nia and Shan’s narratives builds up in a quiet crescendo. Although ‘not much’ seems to go on, both the characters and the readers are aware of the dangerous and vulnerable position Shan is as he spends most of his waking time unsure whether his loved ones are alive and in fear of being deported.
You People is not an easy read. The violence against and dehumanisation of ‘illegal’ immigrants is horrifying. They do not have the freedom that most people—me included—take for granted. To even speak of or refer to people as ‘illegal’ seems wrong. Yet, sadly that is how they are seen by the government. There is one particularly harrowing scene in which the immigration enforcement turns up and what follows will haunt both the readers and the other characters. The ‘not knowing’ what is going to happen to them is terrifying. That a person can be simply taken away like this is horrifying.

Both narratives are told from a third point of view but while Nia’s sections are in the past tense, Shan’s are in the present tense. This switch between tenses suited the characters and their storyline. Nia herself says that she is always looking back, whereas Shan is stuck in a fraught present, not knowing his fate or the one of his loved ones.

Rather than using ‘Nia’ or ‘Shan’ the narratives often address them as ‘she’ and ‘he’. This might annoy some readers, and it does take some using to, but once you’ve leaned into the flow of Lalwani's prose you might appreciate the ambivalent mood that this technique creates.

I loved the scenes which depicted interactions between the Vesuvio staff. Although Shan is far too preoccupied by his life to socialise with the other Tamil cooks, he finds himself bonding with Ava, who is a waitress at the Pizzeria. Nia, who is seen as a white British girl, feels somewhat left out by her colleagues. It is Tuli who quickly becomes the central figure of her ‘new’ life and seems to take an interest in her.
The character dynamics were as nuanced as the characters themselves. Although the cast of characters is fairly small, and the story is mostly focused on Tuli, Shan (his wife and son) and Nia (her mother and sister), however short their appearances may be Lalwani's characters struck me as incredibly realistic.
It was interesting to see Tuli from different perspectives. He always retains a sense of mystery, and for most of the narrative readers are never sure of who he truly is.

Occasionally there were the odd descriptions which were a bit too purple for my taste ( “her whole phyisicality is streaked with the force of these tight lines of feminine power” / “that solid, satisfying elelemnt which ran down her spine like the hard chocolate centre of a Feast ice-cream bar” ).
Nia and Shan’s stories are steeped in loneliness. As they try to reconcile themselves with their past decisions and their new circumstances they begin to form new attachments. While this novel certainly doesn’t provide its characters with easy solutions or happy endings, what it does offer us and its characters is hope.
You People is a deeply melancholic and heart-rendering novel one that I would describe as being the book equivalent of an independent film. Lalwani's quiet writing style and introspective story won’t appeal to everyone...but I do hope that her novel will strike a chord with those readers who are looking for a deeply human tale of survival, guilt, and love.

A hugely important novel about what it feels like to be a refugee/illegal immigrant. Shan fled Sri Lanka after his father was executed, hoping to bring his wife and child over once he was safe, only Shan is never safe and he has lost contact with his wife and child. Shan's life is explored in parallel with Nia, a young Welsh woman from a mixed race, dysfunctional family, trying to extract herself from a toxic family environment and fleeing her past. The characters come together in a shady, half world that straddles the line between respectability and illegality and who is to say which is which?

“But then you would never intervene in anything,’ he said, not in an arguing way, just with this odd, eerie hush in his voice. ‘Let me ask you something. What about the basic idea of just being there? Just taking part, responding to need, not walking on by. To be present rather than absent, to forgo being a bystander?”

I previously read Nikita Lalwani’s Booker longlisted debut novel “Gifted” (which was also the inaugural winner of the “Desmond Elliot Prize”). That book, by the Indian born, Cardiff raised novelist featured as a protagonist the mathematically gifted daughter of an Indian Maths lecturer at Cardiff University, the daughter going to Oxford at only 15.

This book too features, as one of its two alternating first party narrators, a (part) Indian-descended, South Welsh raised girl who goes to Oxford, but otherwise the circumstances are very different.

Our two narrators both work at a London Pizza restaurant (at sometime early-mid 2000s), and over time we learn their backstory.

Nia (and her sister Mira) are the daughters of Sharon – Sharon, estranged from her Inland Revenue employed Father and housemaker mother, moves to Newport at eighteen and takes up a bohemian lifestyle, her daughters being born as the result of one-night stands and Sharon sinking into alcoholism, verbal abuse and extreme poverty. Nia successfully applies via an access scheme and gets a place to study PPE, but is sent down after one-year, dragged down by Mira and Sharon’s neediness, and in her anger flees to London (although still consumed with guilt over leaving her sister to cope with her mother).

Shan is a Tamil. Married in Sri Lanka to an academic and with a young son, and son of a campaigning Tamil journalist on a pro-opposition Sinhalese newspaper. When his father is first tortured and then executed in the street, Shan in panic seizes his wife’s wedding jewellery and uses it to buy a single passage to Europe. He believes he is protecting his wife and child and that he can pay for them to follow. Circumstances do not match his naïve expectations: the agent is treacherous and the passage is arduous (albeit he is one of the lucky few to make Europe); the UK itself is far less welcoming than he expected (he cannot find a way to make enough money for even the essentials); and his wife will not return his calls.

The Pizza restaurant is Vesuvius, run by the larger than life Tuli, part of a Tamil diaspora (his parents having grown up in Malaysia and he having been raised in Singapore and studied at the LSE) – he now joint owns the restaurant which serves as a base from which he operates an “unofficial open-door policy for waifs and strays”, employing a mix of Tamil cooks (the restaurant is well known as a safe house for Tamil immigrants) as well as others like Nia, operating a money lending business (but one where he lets the recipients set the repayment terms), and acting as a general fixer and sorter-out for anyone (but particularly immigrants – both legal and illegal) that come to him, aided in all of this by the Irish Catholic priest from the nearby church.

As the story progresses – Nia (whose naivety seems suggested by her name) gradually gets more involved in Tuli’s operations and comes to understand more of the ambiguity of what he does: his bending of the rules (for example understating earnings to assist benefit claims, pretending to be offering training rather than employment so as to not imperil asylum claims); his involvement with immigrants trying, like Shan, to get his family to join them leads him to involvement with people smugglers and even drug dealers; his willingness to believe those who come to him lead him to unwittingly sheltering people who deceive him as to either their legal status (when the immigration raid for which Tuli has prepared is launched on his premises, it’s the one person he does not expect who is their target) or their relationships (Nia is particularly exercised by a Hungarian that Tuli supports through a divorce case against an English woman, who claims he beats her).

Tuli pushes back on her idealistic views:

“‘It’s like that. Let’s say that being legal is better than being illegal. So far so good, lah? Telling the truth is better than lying. Again, who is going to disagree? But if you want to apply to become legal, then by doing the application and alerting people to yourself, you are running a very large risk of being deported from the country. So, the question would be – is it better to tell all of the truth, one hundred per cent, and get deported, or is it better to tell mostly the truth, with a few untruths, and become legal?’”

“‘Look,’ he said. ‘Don’t you understand – someone like Shan or Guna or anyone else – they are going to do this anyway. You know that. You know that the situation is dire in Sri Lanka, that people are risking their lives on a daily basis, come on, Nia. What do you think? That my being involved has any effect other than this: making sure that I can point them towards the most reliable, careful way of doing it?’”

Shan’s involvement is more personal – as Tuli finally traces his wife and son, and Shan’s desperation and impetuosity puts the three of them (and his family) at risk.

At times the book can feel like a rather uneasy mix of a worth topic but unsuccessful: Nia seems always several steps behind the reader, Shan is not entirely convincingly voiced. The most interesting character – Tuli – remains something of an enigma.

Where the book is strongest is where the worlds of immigrants and natives overlap, and in fact in two scenes where the “You People” of the title is used.

One is in a scene where Shan is confronted by the mother of a young boy he often comes across walking to work and is obsessed by (as he reminds him of his son) – at the time the young boy is ill and she blames “you people” for the overcrowded hospitals and long waiting times she endures.

You’re right, he thinks, I have taken something from you by living here, and simultaneous, in dream, like hands closing round a neck in threat, pressing as if they might close off the cord of breath, shut things down so fast, he thinks . . . but I can live too. If I live, does it really mean you will die, lady? If my boy comes here, my small tiger cub, my baby son, does it mean that your sweet boy will die? What if my boy had died there, lady, in my country? What then?

This scene slightly ruined later by a slightly unnecessary reconciliation between the two.

The second is when Tuli first lets Nia assist his work – going out to recycling bins to look for things to assist families in need:

‘The things you people throw away!’ he said, getting out of the car,

He talked her through the routine. This was a good time generally to pick up discarded items in good condition; after a few hours you would have the problem of dew. You wanted to be looking for furniture rather than utensils or electrics: tables, chairs, drawers, that kind of thing.

Nia has to force herself not to engage in a check-your-privilege battle

“She began to formulate an appropriately withering reply (come on, they may be white, but these are more your people than mine, you’re the one who is the big guy restaurateur in this bloody bourgeois area, the skips I know in Newport are not like this, and so on,”

Something made more poignant for the reader (although oddly not remarked by Nia) by its immediate recollection to the first phone call we see between Nia and Mira when Mira effectively brings Mira up short by almost threateningly saying “I’ve been doing the skips again—’”

“By ‘doing the skips’, Mira meant she was doing what they had done whenever things got to their worst and their mother was out of action – gone to the skips of the local supermarkets after dark and rifled through the packages for unused food. The safest parts were from the bakery – bread rolls, Danish pastries, bagels, all baked that morning and thrown that night. They didn’t ever take the fish or meat, even if they were in three layers of clingfilm, not just because you might get sick, but because by that point, if you were rifling through rubbish, you weren’t about to start cooking when you got back.”

And this is perhaps the greatest strength of the book – its examination of the moral trade-offs of assisting with migrants, set against a clever examination of class in Britain. The author is particularly good on accents:

Of Nia:

“She had her mother’s curves and hair, but a new voice by now, shorn of the Welsh wool. That was one of the first things she did at Oxford, along with getting rid of her home bleached locks. She remembered wearing those new vowels like furs, feeling that showy and ridiculous. It wasn’t just the accent, it was the timbre of those new vowels like furs, feeling that showy and ridiculous. It wasn’t just the accent, it was the timbre of her voice. She’d worked on lowering it from the baby girl pitch to which it sometimes leaned.”

Of the Hungarian’s wife.

‘I am looking for Mr Tuli,’ she said in one of those generic Eng lish voices: class less, accent less and as well constructed as her outfit. It takes one to know one, thought Nia, and she could tell straight away that the woman had done a good ironing job on whatever her original creasing would have been.

Overall a worthwhile read.

Topical and timely; Lalwani's "You People" is pure literature, thought-provoking and poignant, it deals with the themes of identity, of belonging, of holding one's own despite the hand that's been dealt.

‘You People’ by Nikita Lalwani is a wonderful novel about the struggle to belong. Told in part by Nia, a bright mixed-race Welsh girl who heads to London after dropping out of university and by Shan, an illegal Sri Lankan immigrant, much of the dialogue and some the action takes place in the Pizzaria Vesuvio where they both work. Gradually they learn to trust each other. Nia listens to Shan’s concerns about his wife and baby; for much of the novel he is desperate to hear from Devaki who is angry that he fled. When he understands that his family are journeying towards him, he is terrified what the traffickers will do to her.
Whilst Nia does not have to contend with problems of a geographical magnitude, she has had to harden her heart. Her mother is an abusive alcoholic and her younger sister Mira is extremely vulnerable. Yet Nia refuses to go home and carries with her an undercurrent of guilt all the time. Like Shan she has gone against the wishes of her family.
At the centre of these transitory people’s lives is Tuli. Owner of the restaurant, he spends much of his time lending ‘illegals’ money as well as helping them with their paperwork, giving them jobs and hiding them from Immigration officials. But why is he doing these potentially very dangerous things? Lalwani is a marvellous creator of character, mainly through dialogue but also through little details about clothing or movement. Nia is ‘around Tuli in that restaurant, right there watching the granular decisions he held like sand in his palm, so fearlessly every day, she hoped that she would learn how to spread light instead of darkness.’ Tuli is adored by the people he protects yet he seems a little shady, not always the best judge of character. Where does his money come from? Why does he appear friendly and yet distant? Over the course of the novel we begin to understand who he is but it is not until the dramatic climax that we can be sure.
Lalwani’s novel is a superb evocation of the extraordinarily stressful life of the illegal immigrant. She highlights how they are battling in every area of their lives, living with loss, hardship, racism and fear. And, occasionally, other people understand and connect.
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

This is a challenging book. On the one hand,it is a perceptive and sensitive study of the dangers facing illegal immigrants who are trying to escape from traumatic events in their own countries. On the other hand,they are in this country illegally. The stories show many of the characters in the book to be hard workers,eager to keep families together and providing facilities to customers in the Italian restaurant which is the centre of their lives here. That all gives the reader something to think about. The characters may be fictional but the events are happening behind the scenes all the time in our and other countries. This book is not a mystery or a romantic novel. It is a well written,tough story.