You Don't Know Me by Imran Mahmood
Mr Not a Gangster... Or is he???
You Don't Know Me by Imran Mahmood is the story of a young man charged with a gang-related murder, who chooses to give his own closing statement disclosing what 'really happened'.
Story ☆☆★★★
You Don't Know Me is one of those stories that lays everything out, not just from the front page, but from the blurb. Before even opening the book, the reader is set up with expectations on what this book will deliver. Mahmood is saying, "Here is an open and shut case, but I will tell you the full story, which will change everything". This is a pretty big opening gambit, especially for a first time author; but does the book deliver?
The short version is: sometimes. In fairness, most of the time. Where Mahmood falls down is maintaining the reader's levels of suspense and suspension of disbelief. There is a point about half way through You Don't Know Me where it feels like the story could end, the answer is given, and the reader is left puzzled by what's in the remaining 170 pages.
Mahmood pulls a switcheroo that is arguably quite lazy, and left me annoyed for the following third of a book. It feels, during that time, like things are being stretched out a little too thin. One starts to question the whole premise, whether a judge and jury would truly sit through a week's worth of closing statement with not one objection or interruption, and it feels like both author and narrator are playing for time.
The ending, thank goodness, lifts the entire book. While it might be tempting to compare You Don't Know Me to the courtroom dramas of John Grisham or the bait-and-switch, last page surprises of Gillian Flynn, there is a more interesting comparison to be made. You Don't Know Me reminds me most of Yann Martel's Life of Pi, stripped of its magical realism. The reader is presented with a long, rambling and essentially fantastical story to explain what appears to be a simple crime. At the end the reader is invited to decide, which version of this story do you prefer?
The short version is: sometimes. In fairness, most of the time. Where Mahmood falls down is maintaining the reader's levels of suspense and suspension of disbelief. There is a point about half way through You Don't Know Me where it feels like the story could end, the answer is given, and the reader is left puzzled by what's in the remaining 170 pages.
Mahmood pulls a switcheroo that is arguably quite lazy, and left me annoyed for the following third of a book. It feels, during that time, like things are being stretched out a little too thin. One starts to question the whole premise, whether a judge and jury would truly sit through a week's worth of closing statement with not one objection or interruption, and it feels like both author and narrator are playing for time.
The ending, thank goodness, lifts the entire book. While it might be tempting to compare You Don't Know Me to the courtroom dramas of John Grisham or the bait-and-switch, last page surprises of Gillian Flynn, there is a more interesting comparison to be made. You Don't Know Me reminds me most of Yann Martel's Life of Pi, stripped of its magical realism. The reader is presented with a long, rambling and essentially fantastical story to explain what appears to be a simple crime. At the end the reader is invited to decide, which version of this story do you prefer?
Style ☆★★★★
The majority of the book is narrated in the first person by the anonymous defendant. It is written in the dialect of black South London. The books that I normally read leave me with a Received Pronunciation accent as I slide into to the narration in my head. With You Don't Know Me, I kept catching myself whispering the words under my breath. There is something poetic about the cadence Mahmood achieves, despite frequently using words I would never say in my day-to-day life.
Mahmood's narrator is also a charming storyteller. Like Tristram Shandy, he jokes with his 'audience', translates various terms in response to their blank expressions, and neatly reminds the reader that this is one man telling a story, the story of his life.
Various brakes and official looking page plates remind the reader that this is supposed to be a transcription, that this speech is not, in its original form, a written document, but a spoken one. Perhaps this is the root cause of my whispering the story to myself on the bus. Mahmood's speech aping style works very, very well.
There are phrases that become repetitive, such as the narrator's fixation with his girlfriend Kira's eyes. People do have repetition in the way they talk, and if you heard someone deliver an ad hoc speech every day over the course of a week, then surely their verbal tics would start to grate. This, however, is a novel and it would be nice if it didn't descend to that level of realism.
Mahmood's narrator is also a charming storyteller. Like Tristram Shandy, he jokes with his 'audience', translates various terms in response to their blank expressions, and neatly reminds the reader that this is one man telling a story, the story of his life.
Various brakes and official looking page plates remind the reader that this is supposed to be a transcription, that this speech is not, in its original form, a written document, but a spoken one. Perhaps this is the root cause of my whispering the story to myself on the bus. Mahmood's speech aping style works very, very well.
There are phrases that become repetitive, such as the narrator's fixation with his girlfriend Kira's eyes. People do have repetition in the way they talk, and if you heard someone deliver an ad hoc speech every day over the course of a week, then surely their verbal tics would start to grate. This, however, is a novel and it would be nice if it didn't descend to that level of realism.
Substance ☆☆★★★
Reading You Don't Know Me as a white, middle class woman from rural Wales is a bit of a surreal experience -- and Mahmood directly confronts that this might be unusual for a lot of his readers. The narrator repeatedly acknowledges that his world is different from that of the judge, jury and opposing counsel. Their lives are different. Their language is different. Their experience of life is different.
How accurate Mahmood is to the life of a young black man in South London I can't say, but he certainly paints a picture. The casual references to women in crack dens working naked so they can't steal drugs, or boys as young as ten indoctrinated into gang culture like child soldiers, is a world away from my own experience of life. But as a criminal defence lawyer working in London, despite the class difference, this is a world with which Mahmood is all too familiar. Dickens would come to mind, if Dickens had ever written whole novels in the dialect of the people he was trying to bring to public attention.
How accurate Mahmood is to the life of a young black man in South London I can't say, but he certainly paints a picture. The casual references to women in crack dens working naked so they can't steal drugs, or boys as young as ten indoctrinated into gang culture like child soldiers, is a world away from my own experience of life. But as a criminal defence lawyer working in London, despite the class difference, this is a world with which Mahmood is all too familiar. Dickens would come to mind, if Dickens had ever written whole novels in the dialect of the people he was trying to bring to public attention.
The Verdict ☆☆★★★
This is the first review I've written where I feel bad about the rating that I'm giving it. Mahmood has done brilliant things: the narrator is both charming and informative without obviously weighing the story down with exposition; the story has a truly interesting ending; and some of Mahmood's prose is beautiful. But the flat truth is there are parts of this book I really didn't like reading, that bored and frustrated me, and I can't ignore that. Unlike in You Don't Know Me, I am not forced to give a black and white verdict, but can give one that's in the middle. This book certainly has pacing imperfections, but makes me very much look forward to whatever else Mahmood might produce.
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