Award-winning poet Rajinderpal S. Pal’s However Far Away (House of Anansi Press, 2024) is an achingly beautiful and deeply resonant debut novel that explores themes of identity, belonging, and the complexities of home – in an elegantly telescoped and richly nuanced way.
Set in Vancouver, BC, the novel follows Devinder Gill, an adopted son of a powerful immigrant family, as he navigates between the tensions of his family, his responsibilities, and relationships. Dev lives with his wife Kuldip and their two young children in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood, and the entire story unfolds over the course of just one day. It’s the day of his nephew’s elaborate Sikh wedding, and Dev faces a precarious situation. He is secretly involved in an affair with his first love Emily Rice, an Irish Canadian woman recently returned after nine years abroad. Both Kuldip and Emily are attending the wedding, putting Dev’s delicate balance at risk of unraveling.
Alternating between past and present, the novel offers perspectives from Devinder, Kuldip, and Emily, which gradually reveal the complexities that have led them to this moment. And as the wedding progresses, Dev contends with family secrets and broken promises, and confronts the painful truth that he has far less control over his life than he once believed. However Far Away offers a nuanced portrayal of the choices – and the compromises – we make, and their lasting consequences.
The moment of inspiration . . . and the work that followed
Pal got the idea for the story one serendipitous afternoon, sparked by a seemingly mundane occurrence. “The character Devinder Gill first manifested on a Saturday afternoon in June 2005, the first summer of my years living in Vancouver. It was a hot, cloudless day: the kind of day that leaves you with an overwhelming appreciation for the natural beauty the city offers—the ocean, the mountains, the coastline, all in one view,” Pal recalls. “That morning, I had been sitting on a park bench, under a weeping willow, near Kitsilano Beach, when a South Asian man, similar in age to me, ran past in weathered shorts and tank top, wearing headphones. I immediately began to imagine what the man might be running from . . . or running toward.”
It was a straight line from this moment to the first draft of the novel’s opening scene, a sketch that would become the foundation of this novel, nearly two decades later. The broad strokes of Devinder’s character – outward success and deep, internal conflict – emerged straightaway: “Even that afternoon, I had a good sense that Devinder was someone who lived his life with a certain degree of conflict, though he was generally loved and admired. That he would have a deep connection with music, and would define himself as Canadian through his choice of clothes, his connection to the land, and his taste in music.”
But from this point on, the process of writing However Far Away would bring unexpected developments, including the story’s expansion from a novella to a sprawling family saga. Characters like Kuldip and Emily evolved beyond Pal’s initial conception, taking on a life of their own. “When I wrote that opening scene of Devinder running along the coastline in Kitsilano, I imagined a character study, a single point-of-view,” Pal explains. “I had a busy corporate career at the time, and figured all I could manage was a novella. But when I plunged back into it in late 2018, the characters of Kuldip and Emily kept imploring me for a greater role, and for their voices to be heard.”
And these two characters demanded the most from him as a writer. “All of my characters borrow traits from people I know, but also have traits and story elements that are completely fabricated,” he notes. “Writing from the point-of-view of Emily and Kuldip required my deepest attention and empathy. Writing from their perspectives was enlightening and enriching. It is not an overstatement to say that writing through their eyes made me see the world in new ways.”
The theme of settling
At the heart of However Far Away lies a deep exploration of what it means to settle—both in physical space, and within one’s identity and relationships. So central was this theme to the novel’s development that Pal’s original working title was Settle: “Thematically, I was attempting to write a story that would explore all the different meanings of this word ‘settle’: making a home, shifting ground, acceptance and compromise, paying off a debt, getting even, and settler vs. Indigenous.”
For Pal, the immigrant experience intertwines tightly with these notions of settlement, especially in the difficult choices that families must make when establishing themselves in a new country. The Sandhus, Devinder’s adoptive family, represent the sacrifices and hard work of many immigrant families when they settle in a new home. A sense of obligation thus shapes Devinder’s relationship with the family who raised him. “Where and how you choose to make a home is of critical importance to all immigrant families, and those early decisions are often made for you by circumstance and chance,” Pal reflects. “The Sandhu family, who adopted the orphaned Devinder, had sacrificed and worked hard to build a degree of wealth that allowed them to have agency and control over their own decisions.”
Because Devinder is a beneficiary of that wealth, “he can never shake the idea that he has a duty and an obligatory debt to the Sandhus.” By contrast, Kuldip and Emily are on their own journeys of belonging, and offer insight into the varied ways that individuals seek and define “home”.
Music . . . and the messiness of life
One element that assumes outsized importance in the novel is music, which serves as both a unifying force and an expressive outlet for the characters. The novel even features its own playlist! For Pal, this feature is deeply personal, born from his own relationship with music. “Music has been both an escape and an inspiration for me since my teenage years. It’s been both a way to fit in and a way to define an individual character,” Pal shares. “As an awkward teenager and young adult, making mixtapes for others became a form of communication, allowing me to share emotions I could not speak out loud.”
In this way, music becomes a bridge between Devinder and Emily, fostering intimacy and helping them move beyond barriers of awkwardness. “When I think about my early romantic relationships, music always played a big part: not only listening as a shared activity, but as a path to more open conversations and shedding that awkwardness. I think that is reflected in the relationship between Devinder and Emily.”
The novel’s exquisitely-written one-day journey navigates to an open-ended conclusion, which leaves readers reflecting on the messy, complicated nature of life. “A more definitive ending, one that provided closure, would have felt like a betrayal of the rest of the book,” Pal explains. “In real life, there are hardly ever clean breaks, and emotions are always compromised and complicated.”
However Far Away is a standout debut. It is one of those rare novels that readers truly savour, wishing it would not end . . . because they will never again have the pleasure of reading it for the first time. For readers who reach the end, all that remains for now is the different pleasures of re-reading, the anticipation of what Pal will write next – and the hope that its gestation period will be quicker than that of However Far Away.
Pal will be appearing in multiple events at this year’s Vancouver Writers Festival. Visit writersfest.bc.ca to browse his events.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine, 2024
