Gold Diggers

"I still want, sometimes, to stand in front of time, to dam it up, halt or reroute its current."
Gold Diggers is an insightful magic realism book, focusing on the troubles of growing up in an immigrant family where expectations are placed upon you to make it big in America. Perhaps it was the way I could relate to the book that hit harder for me. Throughout it, Neil, the main character, chases after gold to drink it and attain the ambitions of the owner. This is fueled by an intense desire not to disappoint their parents. He has feelings of mediocrity, as if without the gold, he is nothing. But everything comes with consequences, and what follows is a terrible mistake and an addiction to what he cannot have.
Neil is not perfect; he is far show more from it, desperate for what others have, using any method to take it and make it his. This drives a lot of the conflict in the book, and even after all that happened in his childhood, he collides with his childhood friend, Anita, and performs one of the most dangerous heists he'll do in his life.
The recipe for this ambition comes from Anita's mother, and from that side of the story comes generational trauma, and this longing to stop time. The idea of mortality is commonly repeated in this book and provides great insight into life and what we can't change.
Gold Diggers is a beautifully written book that has resonated deeply within me. Though it may not be everyone's cup of tea, it's a great door to another world, where life is unflinchingly ruthless, yet exhilarating at the same time. show less

Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian begins as a classic, immigrant, coming-of-age story about teenaged Neil Narayan and his struggles with overbearing Indian parents, school, and being in love with his next door neighbor, Anita. It’s funny and realistic — until it’s not — and Sathian continues to bring surprises throughout this genre-bending book. There’s some magical realism, historical fiction, some thrilling crime, and a bit of romance all mixed together. Sathian’s writing is excellent, and she excels at capturing Neil’s angst and poking fun at desi stereotypes.

"A magical realist coming-of-age story, Gold Diggers skewers the model minority myth to tell a hilarious and moving story about immigrant identity, community, and the underside of ambition.

"A floundering second-generation teenager growing up in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, Neil Narayan is funny and smart but struggles to bear the weight of expectations of his family and their Asian American enclave. He tries to want their version of success, but mostly, Neil just wants his neighbor across the cul-de-sac, Anita Dayal.

"When he discovers that Anita is the beneficiary of an ancient, alchemical potion made from stolen gold—a “lemonade” that harnesses the ambition of the gold’s original owner—Neil sees his chance to get ahead. But show more events spiral into a tragedy that rips their community apart. Years later in the Bay Area, Neil still bristles against his community's expectations—and finds he might need one more hit of that lemonade, no matter the cost."

What did I think? It was okay but not great. I never cared for the main character, Neil, or his crush, Anita. I didn't find it very funny, more on the dark side. But I did enjoy hearing about this perspective of life as an immigrant and thought it did a great job of exploring the cost of ambition. show less

Gold Diggers is an Indian-American story unlike any I've read before. It's quite a unique debut novel, focused on the desi diaspora in the US.

The narrator of the book is Neil Narayan (actual name: Neeraj), a young Indian-American teenager. His parents have high expectations from him and his older sister. Unfortunately, the drive that fuels his competitive sister's ambition is missing in Neil and he finds himself struggling to meet their expectations. His focus is more on his neighbour, Anita Dayal, who has a dark secret of her own. Along with her mother Anjali, she brews a special potion made with gold stolen from other desi achievers to harness their energies. After a certain tragedy causes them to part ways, the story resumes ten show more years later, where they need to return to their alchemical adventures once again, this time to save Anjali.

The book aims to be a bildungsroman-cum-heist-cum-literary fiction-magical realism. It performs wonderfully in the bildungsroman part, decently in the heist and magical realism sections but goes for a toss when it comes the literary fiction bit.

I did love the caricatured sarcasm in the book. It takes a not-so-subtle dig at all those Indian Americans who want the best of American opportunities while looking down on American values. They want their children to succeed at engineering or any such prominent field, they want their children to aim at the elite universities, they want their children to avoid alcohol and drugs and premarital sex and get married to their chosen Indian partner after "settling" in the career. All the parents portrayed in the novel except Anjali are stereotypical. Then again, these stereotypes are based very much in reality, though they seem like an exaggeration.

I also appreciate how the author didn't present a picture-perfect cultured Indian-in-America story. The younger generation is shown to have American struggles, American thinking, American attitudes, while still having the Indian guilt hammered in them courtesy their parents. Neil feels tremendous pressure from his parents to become "something", to justify their "shift across the oceans". It's a nice insight into the pressure that the younger generation (born in America to desi parents) feels regularly.

I wish the rest of the book could have matched up to these two positive points. I didn't like the narrative pov of Neil. He was boring and almost self-obsessed. I wish the narrator had been Anjali or Anita. The story would have had so much more to offer if it were from either of their perspectives. Even a multi-pov narration would have worked well. Neil the narrator simply couldn't handle the burden of telling their story effectively. The flashbacks that offer Anjali's story are way more interesting than the present seen through Neil's eyes.

The book starts off very well and until about 40-45%, I was quite hooked onto the story though it was slow-paced at times. After that mark, it just dragged. The plot meanders a lot and ends up becoming a tedious torture. It doesn't recover its momentum till the very end. I was on the verge of giving up on the book many times. The only reason I read it till the end was to know the whats and whys of Anjali's story. That ending did provide some closure, but not satisfaction. The book would have been much better with a strict editing, making the narrative tauter and cutting out all unnecessary chaff.

All in all, this was a book that had tremendous potential but failed to achieve the promised heights. It is still a great debut, especially in terms of its innovative storyline. All it needed is a more focused narrative, a better protagonist, and crisper editing.

Thank you, NetGalley and Penguin Press, for the Advanced Review Copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

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This was a great novel, exploring the deepest human emotions of belonging, aspiration, and love -- all told through the interesting lens of a suburban Indian-American family. The book manages to blend an element of mysticism into the practical realities of modern life. Very thought provoking, honest and even humorous. Great read.

I think my biggest problem with this book is that the character I was most interested in was Anita's mom and she....was not a POV character for the majority of the novel. I once again struggle with magical realism, so those parts of the novel didn't feel fully fleshed out for me. I also didn't exactly know what to think when we suddenly switched to, like, a heist story midway through??

All that said, I never considered putting it down, so that's the mark of a good writer. Would read more by this author.

Went with the 3 1/2 average - doesn't quite get there as noir mystery, too much slacker experience to give it the benefit of the doubt.