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Tunnel Vision
The story of Ayesha, a 31-year-old independant woman floating between the past and the present.
- GenresPakistan
288 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 23, 2023
I actually really wanted to like this book, because the author is one of the founders of Mongrel Books, one of the few rare independent presses in Karachi. An honest assessment of the publishing scene in Pakistan will tell you that there is a desperate dearth of such endeavours in this country, and I was personally very excited when Mongrel Books first launched back in 2016. That might be one of the reasons I was so very disappointed when this book turned out to be boring, and long-winded, and mostly meaningless.
Granted, Mongrel Books’ first publication, a compilation of mostly sub-bar writing, had left me disappointed, but this book was nominated for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize! Which just goes to show that I should have learned my lesson by now: just because a book is nominated for some prestigious, stuffy award, doesn’t mean it’ll actually be any good.
Told in flashbacks, the story focuses on a 31-year-old woman named Ayesha who has a major accident and spends the entirety of the novel floating outside her body. She alternates between moaning and groaning about her current predicament and thinking back on her life, miserable and depressing as it has been. I don’t mean to make the story sound so gloomy, but that genuinely was the whole vibe of the novel: everything was sad and dismal, and sometimes there were funny bits but mostly there was, unfortunately, more of the death and the gloom.
So it was another day of self-inflicted tension, ceaseless self-doubt, and never-ending negativity.
One could argue that this book tries to paint a picture of what it is like to be a woman in her thirties with a job and a troubled family life, but my god, does nothing good ever happen to her? Even the romance, ostensibly a huge part of Ayesha’s life and one of the primary reasons for the accident in the first place, feels like a drag. That could be because the hero, whom we only see in flashbacks, turns out to be something of a spoilt, nepotism-loving, commitment-phobic idiot.
Rumour had it that he’d rejected his father’s offer of starting at the top and decided to work his way up instead. No one felt comfortable enough with him to point out that marketing director wasn’t exactly Step One.
Even the fact that he shares the same first name as my husband did not endear him to me, the most obvious explanation of this fact being that my Saad, whom I might be biased towards, is certainly a much better specimen of the male species compared to the book Saad. It also doesn’t help that there is so much problematic content to unpack here. Our protagonist regularly makes fun of mental illness and mentions them in the casually demeaning manner of those who have never been told to treat people with disabilities with respect.
I had a hard time resisting the urge to slap his head. His panic-stricken face last night, his complacent grinning mug the next morning, schizophrenic was what he was. He’d skipped the manic depression that affected the rest of us, and gone straight to the next level. Typical man, thinking he deserved better than the women.
Throughout the book, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the author wanted to come across as witty and wise, couching her nuggets of sage advice and thoughtful observation within her amusing, effortless writing. Sadly enough, the tone that comes across leans more towards bitter, self-loathing, and whiny than anything else. I’m usually all for stories that focus on characters and their personal lives, as long as the whole thing is moved along by the plot. In fact, some of my favourite novels have been slow, character-driven affairs. But in this case, I liked the idea more than the execution.
Did I like it because it distracted me from full comprehension of what a self-absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac I was? But I wasn’t a self-absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac! I was enlightened, if in moderation…
Of course, the really disturbing version of women empowerment in the book doesn’t really help. Ayesha has some deep-seated misogynistic issues that the story doesn’t really try to address, instead coating a veneer of feminism over the mostly problematic ideas being espoused. The Ayesha that we see is a brand of woman I have encountered in my own life far too many times, unfortunately. These are the people who, on the surface, will exhort all of the right values: women should have the right to wear what they want, do what they want, be what they want. But their actions and dialogues don’t really mesh with what they claim to support: they will routinely judge other women’s clothes, comment on another women’s poor child-rearing habits/cooking skills/house maintenance abilities, or indulge in the same sort of sexist behaviour that their chauvinistic contemporaries partake in. These people are a particularly trying brand of human beings, because I get lulled into a false sense of security with them, not knowing that their sexism is an internalized issue that will come out at the most inopportune moment.
For all its drawbacks, belonging to the female gender had its advantages. Separate, shorter lines for utility bills, the possibility of chivalrous assistance if your car broke down where a man would have had to push his vehicle himself, not to mention the advantage women extorted in shopping.
This idea of women’s lives being easier because of their gender is such a pile of festering horseshit that it blows my mind that people are still falling for this line. How have we not all, on a collective level, just finally gone past this obsession with the ‘woman card’, a concept so absurd and ridiculous that I do not have the time to sit down and explain the preposterousness of it all. I’m not being paid to educate anyone, so I’m not going to waste my time jotting down the ways in which a patriarchal society gives women these small, momentary conveniences or how separate lines/immediate help protect the women from the men themselves. At this stage, people should just know better.
So it’s fair to say that the book frustrated me, to a certain degree. And I had to struggle, in the face of all that misplaced misogyny, to find stuff that I liked within the book, but fair’s fair and there was some parts, here and there, that kept me going. A few of the paragraphs were well written, or relatable, or did the slight jump from pretentious to smart quickly enough to keep me hooked. In a way, there was a possibility of greatness, which an editor’s discerning eye could have polished, but sadly left untouched.
I wanted to matter to somebody other than my blood relatives. I wanted to matter, to anybody, for reasons that had to do with my self and not with the blood that ran in my veins. I wanted to be first on some other soul’s list of priorities.
A huge part of me had begun the book wanting to like it, so throughout the reading experience I was mostly balanced on the knife’s edge of being disappointed because it didn’t rise to my expectations and being agreeable because I had wanted to like it. Although a significant portion of it tended to disappoint me, I was glad that at least there were some parts where I felt justified in my desire to be pleased with the writing.
Sometimes I wanted to slap his well-bred, hair-free face. Shake him out of what I considered complacency and he considered peace of mind. Drag him down to where the rest of us thrashed in pointless exertion against crooked games.
Of course, the fact that Karachi features so prominently within the book was always going to be a winning point for me. I have always been very vocal about my soft spot for books that are desi in their settings and their characters. Having grown up reading mostly North American or European books, I still feel that slight thrill when encountering South Asian characters who could be a reflection of the reality of my life. While it’s true that even books with local settings can be a hit-and-miss (as proven by Mira Sethi or Daniyal Mueenuddin’s works), this author had used the map of Karachi to connect points in her story, naming all the famous spots diligently throughout the narrative. Being able to identify the places mentioned within a book is its own sort of high, a cultural currency I had been missing out on in my earlier reading years. That’s why, even when the book joked wryly about the rampant corruption or indulged in clichés about eating mangoes and suffering electricity breakdowns, I continued to be charmed.
They were very insulted if their fourth cousin’s third wife’s gardener’s dog wasn’t allowed to bend the rule and come for a visit. Their men might wait for the guard enforcing the rule to come off duty and beat him to a pulp.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. I like, in theory, the things the author has to say about literature and politics and the process of publishing in Pakistan. As someone who is part of the publishing industry of which she speaks, I can see very clearly the truth of what she is saying, and could, if pressed, back up her claims with personal anecdotes. But smart things said in a structured interview do not have any bearing on the written word in her novel, so unfortunately the book will be judged on its own merits. Final verdict: give this a miss.
***
I review Pakistani Fiction, and talk about Pakistani fiction, and want to talk to people who like to talk about fiction (Pakistani and otherwise, take your pick.) To read more reviews or just contact me so you can talk about books, check out my Blog or follow me on Twitter!
***
ORIGINAL COMMENT:
What a horribly depressing book. Review to come.
Granted, Mongrel Books’ first publication, a compilation of mostly sub-bar writing, had left me disappointed, but this book was nominated for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize! Which just goes to show that I should have learned my lesson by now: just because a book is nominated for some prestigious, stuffy award, doesn’t mean it’ll actually be any good.
Told in flashbacks, the story focuses on a 31-year-old woman named Ayesha who has a major accident and spends the entirety of the novel floating outside her body. She alternates between moaning and groaning about her current predicament and thinking back on her life, miserable and depressing as it has been. I don’t mean to make the story sound so gloomy, but that genuinely was the whole vibe of the novel: everything was sad and dismal, and sometimes there were funny bits but mostly there was, unfortunately, more of the death and the gloom.
So it was another day of self-inflicted tension, ceaseless self-doubt, and never-ending negativity.
One could argue that this book tries to paint a picture of what it is like to be a woman in her thirties with a job and a troubled family life, but my god, does nothing good ever happen to her? Even the romance, ostensibly a huge part of Ayesha’s life and one of the primary reasons for the accident in the first place, feels like a drag. That could be because the hero, whom we only see in flashbacks, turns out to be something of a spoilt, nepotism-loving, commitment-phobic idiot.
Rumour had it that he’d rejected his father’s offer of starting at the top and decided to work his way up instead. No one felt comfortable enough with him to point out that marketing director wasn’t exactly Step One.
Even the fact that he shares the same first name as my husband did not endear him to me, the most obvious explanation of this fact being that my Saad, whom I might be biased towards, is certainly a much better specimen of the male species compared to the book Saad. It also doesn’t help that there is so much problematic content to unpack here. Our protagonist regularly makes fun of mental illness and mentions them in the casually demeaning manner of those who have never been told to treat people with disabilities with respect.
I had a hard time resisting the urge to slap his head. His panic-stricken face last night, his complacent grinning mug the next morning, schizophrenic was what he was. He’d skipped the manic depression that affected the rest of us, and gone straight to the next level. Typical man, thinking he deserved better than the women.
Throughout the book, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the author wanted to come across as witty and wise, couching her nuggets of sage advice and thoughtful observation within her amusing, effortless writing. Sadly enough, the tone that comes across leans more towards bitter, self-loathing, and whiny than anything else. I’m usually all for stories that focus on characters and their personal lives, as long as the whole thing is moved along by the plot. In fact, some of my favourite novels have been slow, character-driven affairs. But in this case, I liked the idea more than the execution.
Did I like it because it distracted me from full comprehension of what a self-absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac I was? But I wasn’t a self-absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac! I was enlightened, if in moderation…
Of course, the really disturbing version of women empowerment in the book doesn’t really help. Ayesha has some deep-seated misogynistic issues that the story doesn’t really try to address, instead coating a veneer of feminism over the mostly problematic ideas being espoused. The Ayesha that we see is a brand of woman I have encountered in my own life far too many times, unfortunately. These are the people who, on the surface, will exhort all of the right values: women should have the right to wear what they want, do what they want, be what they want. But their actions and dialogues don’t really mesh with what they claim to support: they will routinely judge other women’s clothes, comment on another women’s poor child-rearing habits/cooking skills/house maintenance abilities, or indulge in the same sort of sexist behaviour that their chauvinistic contemporaries partake in. These people are a particularly trying brand of human beings, because I get lulled into a false sense of security with them, not knowing that their sexism is an internalized issue that will come out at the most inopportune moment.
For all its drawbacks, belonging to the female gender had its advantages. Separate, shorter lines for utility bills, the possibility of chivalrous assistance if your car broke down where a man would have had to push his vehicle himself, not to mention the advantage women extorted in shopping.
This idea of women’s lives being easier because of their gender is such a pile of festering horseshit that it blows my mind that people are still falling for this line. How have we not all, on a collective level, just finally gone past this obsession with the ‘woman card’, a concept so absurd and ridiculous that I do not have the time to sit down and explain the preposterousness of it all. I’m not being paid to educate anyone, so I’m not going to waste my time jotting down the ways in which a patriarchal society gives women these small, momentary conveniences or how separate lines/immediate help protect the women from the men themselves. At this stage, people should just know better.
So it’s fair to say that the book frustrated me, to a certain degree. And I had to struggle, in the face of all that misplaced misogyny, to find stuff that I liked within the book, but fair’s fair and there was some parts, here and there, that kept me going. A few of the paragraphs were well written, or relatable, or did the slight jump from pretentious to smart quickly enough to keep me hooked. In a way, there was a possibility of greatness, which an editor’s discerning eye could have polished, but sadly left untouched.
I wanted to matter to somebody other than my blood relatives. I wanted to matter, to anybody, for reasons that had to do with my self and not with the blood that ran in my veins. I wanted to be first on some other soul’s list of priorities.
A huge part of me had begun the book wanting to like it, so throughout the reading experience I was mostly balanced on the knife’s edge of being disappointed because it didn’t rise to my expectations and being agreeable because I had wanted to like it. Although a significant portion of it tended to disappoint me, I was glad that at least there were some parts where I felt justified in my desire to be pleased with the writing.
Sometimes I wanted to slap his well-bred, hair-free face. Shake him out of what I considered complacency and he considered peace of mind. Drag him down to where the rest of us thrashed in pointless exertion against crooked games.
Of course, the fact that Karachi features so prominently within the book was always going to be a winning point for me. I have always been very vocal about my soft spot for books that are desi in their settings and their characters. Having grown up reading mostly North American or European books, I still feel that slight thrill when encountering South Asian characters who could be a reflection of the reality of my life. While it’s true that even books with local settings can be a hit-and-miss (as proven by Mira Sethi or Daniyal Mueenuddin’s works), this author had used the map of Karachi to connect points in her story, naming all the famous spots diligently throughout the narrative. Being able to identify the places mentioned within a book is its own sort of high, a cultural currency I had been missing out on in my earlier reading years. That’s why, even when the book joked wryly about the rampant corruption or indulged in clichés about eating mangoes and suffering electricity breakdowns, I continued to be charmed.
They were very insulted if their fourth cousin’s third wife’s gardener’s dog wasn’t allowed to bend the rule and come for a visit. Their men might wait for the guard enforcing the rule to come off duty and beat him to a pulp.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. I like, in theory, the things the author has to say about literature and politics and the process of publishing in Pakistan. As someone who is part of the publishing industry of which she speaks, I can see very clearly the truth of what she is saying, and could, if pressed, back up her claims with personal anecdotes. But smart things said in a structured interview do not have any bearing on the written word in her novel, so unfortunately the book will be judged on its own merits. Final verdict: give this a miss.
***
I review Pakistani Fiction, and talk about Pakistani fiction, and want to talk to people who like to talk about fiction (Pakistani and otherwise, take your pick.) To read more reviews or just contact me so you can talk about books, check out my Blog or follow me on Twitter!
***
ORIGINAL COMMENT:
What a horribly depressing book. Review to come.
September 16, 2017
To begin with, it's saddening to see no proper review of the book available here on good reads of a publication that came good ten years back.
Tunnel Vision is an explicitly feminist novel to the extent that it appears in parts a work in critical prose mixed with memoir. Ayesha is the narrator of the story who is a working women and in love with Saad--a colleague and son of the company's owner. One day, Ayesha after having a verbal duel with her mother goes on a meeting set up with Saad and explodes on him on trivialities. On the same meeting Ayesha proposes Saad to marry her, which he does not respond to. On her way back she had a car accident that leaves her on hospital bed. The entire plot of the novel is a collection of Ayesha's recollection of events from past and present from hospital bed in comatose.
Throughout the novel Minhas' Ayesha had an agressive demeanour, be it her mother, brother or lover. There are details of hardships, social and emotional, that working women face in Pakistan. Like other female Pakistani fictionists we also find serious criticism of Zia's Islamisation project in the book voiced through the chracter of Ayesha.
It was agonizing to read that a mother-daughter relationship can be full of such detest as was of Ayesha with hercmother. On an instance in the story Jahaan, mother of Ayesha, calls her 'taxi' a whore. Ayesha wished that her mother dies and she and her borther may live in peace. Ayesha's father had left home three years back when he was caught by Jahaan and Ayesha, in an objectionable position with their maid on a kitchen table.
The writing of Minhas is ver smooth and the narrative does not turn tedious at any point. The story is in the backdrop of Karachi where Minhas has cleverly titled the chapters by using expression from various cultural elements of Karachi's life including rickshaw writings, tv commercials, songs etc. I kept changing my feelings about different chracters from anger to sympathy to love as the details about their past and present kept unfolding.
Finally her father returns in the last chapter.
It was a gripping read.
Tunnel Vision is an explicitly feminist novel to the extent that it appears in parts a work in critical prose mixed with memoir. Ayesha is the narrator of the story who is a working women and in love with Saad--a colleague and son of the company's owner. One day, Ayesha after having a verbal duel with her mother goes on a meeting set up with Saad and explodes on him on trivialities. On the same meeting Ayesha proposes Saad to marry her, which he does not respond to. On her way back she had a car accident that leaves her on hospital bed. The entire plot of the novel is a collection of Ayesha's recollection of events from past and present from hospital bed in comatose.
Throughout the novel Minhas' Ayesha had an agressive demeanour, be it her mother, brother or lover. There are details of hardships, social and emotional, that working women face in Pakistan. Like other female Pakistani fictionists we also find serious criticism of Zia's Islamisation project in the book voiced through the chracter of Ayesha.
It was agonizing to read that a mother-daughter relationship can be full of such detest as was of Ayesha with hercmother. On an instance in the story Jahaan, mother of Ayesha, calls her 'taxi' a whore. Ayesha wished that her mother dies and she and her borther may live in peace. Ayesha's father had left home three years back when he was caught by Jahaan and Ayesha, in an objectionable position with their maid on a kitchen table.
The writing of Minhas is ver smooth and the narrative does not turn tedious at any point. The story is in the backdrop of Karachi where Minhas has cleverly titled the chapters by using expression from various cultural elements of Karachi's life including rickshaw writings, tv commercials, songs etc. I kept changing my feelings about different chracters from anger to sympathy to love as the details about their past and present kept unfolding.
Finally her father returns in the last chapter.
It was a gripping read.
July 26, 2014
It's the second best book I've read in 2014. No idea why I kept putting it off after I started reading it. Read a few pages at most in one go. Maybe because I found myself to be guilty of doing things it accused men of doing? Maybe. In the end, I became aware of the uselessness of all my education if I couldn't bring myself to read something or think about something I felt threatened by.
But really, what an amazing read.
But really, what an amazing read.
January 17, 2021
Really well written. It blends various literary techniques seamlessly. The plot isn’t too complex, or too detailed, but the writers choice of first person narrator in a coma makes it very gripping. And the narrator’s life, personality, worldview is interesting enough to keep the reader going.
Read
August 14, 2019And then I forgave myself.
March 29, 2012
My favorite part about this book is the way in which Minhas weaves the most banal and crass shayeri (poetry - if it can be called that( into a poignant story. It's almost like there are snippets of thoughts as each chapter opens...but they connect to a whole. As someone who was born and grew up in Karachi and traveled frequently through Pakistan, I feel like this technique is in and of itself moving. Kind of the same way in which most people I know experience these shayrs (verses)...always in the background, somehow interwoven in our memories as we reflect back. Perhaps more true for those of us in the diaspora - because we think about the things that are absent in our everyday lives. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
From what I recall - it's been a while since I read it - I also enjoyed the construction of the female protagonist. She lives in the space that so many of the women I know do - liberated yet conservative...a unique product of the Zia-Benazir transition.
From what I recall - it's been a while since I read it - I also enjoyed the construction of the female protagonist. She lives in the space that so many of the women I know do - liberated yet conservative...a unique product of the Zia-Benazir transition.
July 3, 2016
I read an excerpt from this book today in the newspaper and I am hooked. It is sad and witty and funny and warped. Can't wait to read the rest of it as well.
November 15, 2009
Incredibly funny and well-written, would like to see the movie, which is currently in production. She is a seasoned blogger with an offbeat style, and very, very funny!
August 27, 2015
Such a good read. And at times felt like a voice given to what I can't really say. I feel sad, though.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews