Interrogating your privilege can be a divisive, somewhat uncomfortable endeavour \u2013 but the way it underpins everyday lives makes for great fiction.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a topic that has been explored via familial relationships in Brit Bennett\u2019s The Vanishing Half, through the employer-employee dynamic in Kiley Reid\u2019s Such a Fun Age, and in a schoolgirl narrative in Alice Pung\u2019s teen novel Laurinda.<\/p>\n
Australian author Zeynab Gamieldien\u2019s second book, Learned Behaviours, also tackles the issue, via a murder mystery: a searing look at how the intersections of race, class and gender can affect the trajectory of a person\u2019s life, even when they no longer seem consequential.<\/p>\n
It follows Zaid, a prospective barrister who has made considerable efforts to shed his past in a diverse outer part of Sydney known to locals as The Area, which he describes as a \u201cbroad collection of western Sydney suburbs with Canterbury-Bankstown at its heart\u201d. He has travelled overseas, lived in London, drives a Mercedes, and works a job that sees him socialise with the wealthier and whiter north shore and eastern suburbs types on weekends. There he \u201cassume[s] the role of informant\u201d on the quirks of his past life; it\u2019s a currency he trades off in his new world.<\/p>\n
That past comes back to him in the form of Amira, the sister of his high school best friend, Hass, who killed himself after being arrested for the murder of a female friend in their final year of school. Amira has found Hass\u2019s diary and asks Zaid to read it, convinced her brother might have been innocent. Her request draws Zaid back in time to confront painful memories, make rattling revelations and square up to his own role in his friend\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Told between his high-school past and the present, Learned Behaviours isn\u2019t a typical murder mystery. Fans of true crime and meticulously plotted crime fiction might find the ending lacks the kind of detail that provides closure; they might even scoff at the possibility that the police bungled the investigation so spectacularly. But this book is not about a clean finish or plausibility (I could never imagine the boys I know from The Area keeping a diary, for example). In it, the intricacies of the murder investigation take a back seat to the bigger themes of belonging, upward social mobility and wrangling a past that weighs heavy on your present \u2013 not just in Zaid\u2019s case, but in that of his father, Tapey, who is constantly dwelling on the injustices he experienced in District 6 in apartheid South Africa.<\/p>\n
Gamieldien has done an excellent job of interrogating privilege without being sententious or didactic. It\u2019s in the cost of Zaid\u2019s barrister training, which he feels more than his moneyed colleagues; it\u2019s in the bills piling up in his father\u2019s home, and Tapey\u2019s reticence to seek compensation for the wrongs done against him; it\u2019s in his sister Iman\u2019s struggle to leave an abusive relationship in London and return home with a young child in tow.<\/p>\n
Despite appearances, Zaid knows he has not really \u201cmade it\u201d; he\u2019s perpetually on the outer edge of his colleagues\u2019 orbit, lacking the fancy school connections that are traded for favours in the workplace, and the weekends away at coastal second homes.<\/p>\n
Like Gamieldien\u2019s debut, The Scope of Permissibility<\/a> \u2013 which explored the push-pull of faith and desire \u2013 Learned Behaviours explores social codes and what happens when they are broken. Zaid\u2019s inability to swim is a motif, representing how the stark disparity between social classes is experienced on even the most mundane levels. Zaid does his best to rectify it, and the novel is littered with scenes where he plunges himself into bodies of water, hoping for a shift.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Saved for Later<\/p>\n Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia’s culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Early on in the story, Zaid realises that \u201c\u2018making it\u2019 is not synonymous with movement\u201d, and that social climbing does not ensure success or belonging. As he ventures back to The Area more frequently \u2013 to continue visiting his father, yes, but also to spend more time with Amira \u2013 Zaid begins to recognise that getting out of The Area doesn\u2019t mean escaping it.<\/p>\n Learned Behaviours is a pacy, compelling and immersive narrative that deftly tackles a weighty topic. It\u2019s understated but sophisticated, with more than one tragedy at its heart: a murder, yes, but also a necessary reminder that some people can \u201cafford missteps \u2026 requiring only a single step to get back on course\u201d, while others need to tread more carefully, or risk being derailed for ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Interrogating your privilege can be a divisive, somewhat uncomfortable endeavour \u2013 but the way it underpins everyday lives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-53704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}