Gabriel's
Gift is a novel by Hanif Kureishi first published in 2001 about a 15 year-old
Londoner called Gabriel who wants to become a filmmaker and whose parents break
up rather unexpectedly one day—or, as John Crace puts it in The Guardian, "Co-dependent
15-year-old Buddha of Suburbia sorts out his parents' predictably dreary
middle-aged rock'n'roll existential angst before embarking on his own".
Plot summary
Rex Bunch,
Gabriel's father, is a musician who, for a short time back in the 1970s, played
in pop icon Lester Jones's band. However, while (the fictitious) Lester Jones
is still going strong almost thirty years later, Rex has been leading a quiet
and modest life without a regular income together with his live-in partner,
Christine, Gabriel's mother, who back in the good old days designed trendy
clothes for various rock stars. Gabriel's twin brother Archie died while still
little, and in many ways the family of three still live and think according to
the unwritten laws of the late 1960s and 1970s, despising anything remotely
connected with middle class mentality, advocating universal freedom, and
smoking the occasional joint.
When
Christine has had enough of Rex and his lazy, good-for-nothing ways, she throws
him out of the house, and for the first time in decades Rex has to fend for
himself. While Christine herself gets a job as a waitress in a bar and hires an
au pair from some Eastern European country to look after Gabriel, Rex, left to
his own devices, ends up in a shabby bedsit a few blocks away from his former
home but even there has difficulty paying the rent.
A meeting
with Lester Jones renews Rex's hopes of becoming a sought-after musician again,
but when Rex and Gabriel visit him at his hotel it soon turns out that all he
wants is listen to Rex's reminiscences of their days together for his intended
memoir. To Rex's dismay, he does not even pay him for it; however, on parting
he presents Gabriel with one of his drawings.
A talented
creative artist himself, Gabriel is impressed by this gift, but it soon becomes
clear to him that both his parents are after the picture: Christine because,
for the time being, she wants to keep it in a safe place; and Rex because he
wants to sell it immediately. In order to prevent yet another argument between
his mum and dad, Gabriel secretly makes two copies of the drawing—in doing so
he has to forge Lester Jones's signature twice— and hands one copy to each of
his parents while keeping the original for himself.
Unfortunately,
each parent independently has the same idea of presenting the drawing to
Speedy, an old friend of theirs who runs a hamburger restaurant full of 1970s
memorabilia—a place occasionally even visited by Lester Jones himself—so that
the picture can be exhibited there:
'[...] It's
me, me, me, with you lot. People don't know, or won't say, how much they hate
their children.'
He was hardly
listening. She [Christine] wanted him to be a lawyer. He was, he reckoned,
already sufficiently engaged with the Law. In the next few days his mother would
have her forged copy of Lester's picture framed and presented to Speedy, who
would have been presented with two forged copies of the same picture by two
members of the same family.
Gabriel's
prison sentence, already long enough, would surely be increased. [...] (Chapter
10)
At Speedy's
hamburger joint, a chance meeting with film producer Jake Ambler (also
fictitious) sets off Rex's teaching career. Looking for someone to give his
spoiled teenage son private guitar lessons, Jake offers the job to Rex who,
encouraged by Gabriel to do something useful and earn some money at the same
time, reluctantly agrees ("We're not so desperate that we're going to
start working for a living") and eventually, after word of mouth has
spread and he is teaching not just one but several kids, quite enjoys being
seen as an authority on music by his pupils.
Before the
truth about Lester Jones's drawing is found out, Gabriel strikes a deal with
Speedy, regains possession of the picture in exchange for a painting of Speedy
he has to paint himself, and destroys the two copies. Seeing her ex-partner's
reformation, Christine reconsiders her decision to spend the rest of her life
without him and does not mind the end of her affair with George, a young artist
and a regular at the bar where she is waitressing. At the end of the novel Rex
and Christine get married, and in the following summer, under Jake Ambler's
supervision, Gabriel starts shooting his first film.
It should be
noted that, as opposed to other protagonists created by Kureishi, Rex,
Christine and Gabriel are white.
©wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_Gift
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Giuseppe Improta
imgiu@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València
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