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When I Open the Shop
In his small noodle shop in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a young chef obsessively juliennes carrots. Nothing is going according to plan: the bills are piling up, his mother is dead, and there are strangers in his kitchen. The ancestors are watching closely.
Told through a series of brilliant interludes and jump cuts, When I open the shop is sometimes blackly funny, sometimes angry and sometimes lyrical, and sometimes – as a car soars off the road on a horror road trip to the Wairarapa – it takes flight into surrealism. A glimpse into immigrant life in Aotearoa, this is a highly entertaining, surprising and poignant debut novel about grief, struggle and community.
Told through a series of brilliant interludes and jump cuts, When I open the shop is sometimes blackly funny, sometimes angry and sometimes lyrical, and sometimes – as a car soars off the road on a horror road trip to the Wairarapa – it takes flight into surrealism. A glimpse into immigrant life in Aotearoa, this is a highly entertaining, surprising and poignant debut novel about grief, struggle and community.
- GenresFictionContemporary
224 pages, Paperback
Published March 14, 2024
About the author
romesh dissanayake
2 books7 followersromesh dissanayake is a Sri Lankan and Koryo Saram writer, poet and chef from Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. His work explores ideas of identity, migration, decolonisation and place. romesh's poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in various print and online publications. His first novel, When I open the shop, was the winner of the 2022 Modern Letters Fiction Prize and is published by Te Herenga Waka University Press. His chapbook poetry collection, ‘Favourite Flavour House’, is featured in AUP New Poets 10 published by Auckland University Press. He has cooked at Mabel's Burmese Eat and Drink Shop and Rita in Aro Valley.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
May 31, 2024
A quiet little gem about grief, belonging and otherness, identity, and connection. I don’t think anything can say in my review would accurately capture how carefully, and subtly these ideas are explored. But the writing is measured, and pitch perfect, and this story is so alive in its depiction of people and places. A wonderful novel.
March 18, 2024
humane delicious warm cold. top 10 books to make you miss wellington top 10 books to make you miss a place you're from but not from top 10 books to read and enjoy.
romesh's background as a poet makes this a tasty little treat (i.e., somewhat experimental with form). small book contains multitudes. nod to pedro almodovar sets the record straight. it's coincidentally an immigrant story but really a book for all with a perfect little gay sensibility.
made me cry. This book yearns and yearns. And while I really don't like to define a
pan-immigrant experience, I think the closest we can get to naming one of the key ingredients is to acknowledge the boundless, ceaseless yearning.
romesh's background as a poet makes this a tasty little treat (i.e., somewhat experimental with form). small book contains multitudes. nod to pedro almodovar sets the record straight. it's coincidentally an immigrant story but really a book for all with a perfect little gay sensibility.
made me cry. This book yearns and yearns. And while I really don't like to define a
pan-immigrant experience, I think the closest we can get to naming one of the key ingredients is to acknowledge the boundless, ceaseless yearning.
July 30, 2024
v enjoyable little read, and of course an Extra Star for NZ
Read
March 30, 2024very good and interesting book...
love the way it plays with genre....
poetry...
I want more NZ fiction that fucks with the form !!!!
Also i want more books by POC about POC that aren't conforming to the standardised narratives that trap/ limit/ swarm in this space :). (this is an issue for which i primarily place the responsibility on publishers and capitalism etc etc not individual writers of course).
I wrote a longer review here hehe :)) https://badapple.gay/2024/03/23/when-...
love the way it plays with genre....
poetry...
I want more NZ fiction that fucks with the form !!!!
Also i want more books by POC about POC that aren't conforming to the standardised narratives that trap/ limit/ swarm in this space :). (this is an issue for which i primarily place the responsibility on publishers and capitalism etc etc not individual writers of course).
I wrote a longer review here hehe :)) https://badapple.gay/2024/03/23/when-...
May 16, 2024
I loved this gentle story of grief and love and food and finding yourself in modern day Te Whanganui-a-Tara. I loved the writing, it's super poetic and free flowing. I loved Devendra and the food and the spacious narrative.
August 10, 2024
I was hesitant to rate this 5 stars, but upon reflection, I liked everything about this book. The setting, characters and themes were genuine and alive. It was special to read a story set in Wellington and relate the characters to people you know in the city. I enjoyed the mix of writing styles, including poetry. And there were several lines that stopped me in my tracks, including this one: ‘Some people, as soon as you me them, you know they’ll take up a whole chunk of your life.’ The protagonist illustrates that processing grief & building a life isn’t linear, but it is worth it.
August 31, 2024
story based in Wellington - was a very Wellington book if you catch my drift
Read
August 23, 2024he told me that everyone is from somewhere else if you look back far enough...
It feels impossible to rate this book as romesh is a friend of mine and I felt really privileged to read it and feel immersed in this world.
reading this away from pōneke, which has been my home for so many years, felt particularly special and relevant to my reading experience. this is an open letter to the city and the love/hate relationship many of us have with it (for a plethora of reasons).
not to ride the (brilliant) coattails of my brother, but this sentence from his review has really stuck with me - 'I think I should start looking at novels as personal collections of references' - because that's so true. there's so many niche references throughout when I open the shop that by reading this I feel closer to romesh.
this book made me really hungry, I laughed and missed Wellington's obsession with cheese scones.
It feels impossible to rate this book as romesh is a friend of mine and I felt really privileged to read it and feel immersed in this world.
reading this away from pōneke, which has been my home for so many years, felt particularly special and relevant to my reading experience. this is an open letter to the city and the love/hate relationship many of us have with it (for a plethora of reasons).
not to ride the (brilliant) coattails of my brother, but this sentence from his review has really stuck with me - 'I think I should start looking at novels as personal collections of references' - because that's so true. there's so many niche references throughout when I open the shop that by reading this I feel closer to romesh.
this book made me really hungry, I laughed and missed Wellington's obsession with cheese scones.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
May 29, 2024Invested interest has me nervous to read ‘When I Open the Shop.’ I gave some minor notes and opinions on the opening section of romesh’s early draft. And I can call romesh a friend. The one thing I said in my feedback no-one else had yet was that it was funny. I said it was really funny. (Encouragement!) I was laughing out loud a few times a page (me: hard won!). And romesh was taken aback at this accolade. Because not one person had found it funny, or funny enough to note. I thought maybe I’d misstepped and offended, surely not. I asked romesh, do you think it’s funny? Yeah, I think it’s funny.
[At the launch the publisher called it a sad book (grief!) And from the publisher it feels a definitive statement. Romesh maintains it’s funny (in a way that pokes fun at neuroticism, but must first be read from the perspective of one with tricky mentality)!]
I had been excited for the book launch when I knew the book had landed at THW. And that initial excitement was nothing to what I felt the past week. I was smiling all day walking around town in circles doing the most intensive drafting work on my novella—3k+ words within a few hours! Time was passing in twenty minute several hundred word chunks it was awesome! I was keening for the work in Te Awe library—breathing loudly, burping from large kebab indigestion and suppressing exclamations at the words I was typing! Under my breath escaped a “ohh” that wanted to become something more and louder. It’s so cool that prose writing can come this easily through a keyboard versus my necessity to draft on paper for screenplay format—I don’t know what it is. I think there’s so many angles the character’s voices have to come around that the inorganic mode of staring at screen kills their clashing voices. It’s all psychological.
At the launch when I saw romesh, crossing the road with Saraih, as Stella and I sat outside picking through an $8.90 end of day katsu bowl, I raised my fist and shook it victoriously: “ROMESH!” (Part of my excitement was that I might see and share in romesh’s victory with several people I care about, the two key players who tapped out were my sister and Kelda. Sorely missed.)
I read up on ‘Amma’ the other book launched jointly—touching how connected (felt so real at the launch!) romesh and Sariah have been as writers over the course of both book’s lives and ongoing. ‘Amma’ sounds like an emotional-power-work and must-read. Can’t not read it now I know about it! Romesh and Saraih’s speeches for each other outdid both their guest speakers! Because they were heartfelt and lovingly eloquent in a way that comes from emotional investment, there was so much meaning for both of them to share that moment!
I vowed to really READ the book. There’s nothing else I could do but to really READ it. That would be a disservice. It should go with out saying, but I have to tell myself to make sure I do READ ‘When I Open the Shop,’ moreso than the early draft. (I can see a jaded point where one reads the early drafts super intensely so as to try their hand at influencing something, then flicks through the finished one until they hit the acknowledgments page and cry that their name isn’t gilded in its own box at the top.) I’m so excited to see all the work that has gone into the book. Editing is such a crazy process! Ngā mihi, romesh.
Stella bought it for her dad, but read it first. She texted me about a scene where the narrator cooks with his ancestors. I think she thought I’d read the whole book already. I didn’t know how this scene would materialise, I imagined spectres swirling around the narrator’s frying pan handle holding hand. That was a very anime idea. [Later I would read a cooking scene with anime stylisation in my mind, the animated forced perspective going crazy.] It’s been weird recently with ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ how blatantly coded some of these “fantasy” narratives are—caste systems, indigenous elves etc. In ‘Final Fantasy XV’ Gladiolus asks Noctis if he’s ready to face his ancestors with what strength he has; then he berates Noctis to “be serious,” Noctis’ “vitality” increases. (The game gives you two options for Noctis’ decision making brat or benevolence. I’ve been benevolent, I made a political ally when there were such funny bratty options. If I didn’t respect this game’s story I’d be doing the funny options. The medieval politics are serious (and epic) to me.)
The differences between romesh’s narrator and Noctis are vast. Noctis’ is closer to an American facing Irish ancestry. It is less important to NOW.
I’ve been procrastinating reading ‘When I Open the Shop.’ I think I could get to Goodreads’ word limit like this. This has all been lead up.
I have to approach the book as reading something casually. I can always come back for more. There will never be a perfect time to read it, there will simply be a time!
That Vic Cafe meeting with romesh before their move to Melbourne featured talk about Beckett and Camus. The opening line makes me think I’ll be more connected to the references to absurdist lit, the dissociative narrator/character. Maybe the reading to give notes ruined reading it for me, it was a new experience for me. I don’t annotate books normally. There was some confusion behind that reading. [The book exceeds that opening reference--a nod--romesh wrote something else.]
I think romesh knows it was more of a social thing in the end. I don’t think I helped draft 2 & 3, I didn’t feel useful to the manuscript. Remains to be seen. Maybe I was useful to Romesh emotionally! [I said my notes were more “hype,” Romesh seemed to agree, or didn’t deny it. At the time I’d noted, as a personal thing I don’t like when books drop a named local location. It doesn’t really work when it’s one street of no significance, simply a location. Why should the book have to be placed? What does the book have to say about the chosen place? romesh’s book is placed definitively in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, and it is a part of the story. The identity of the book can’t be without this city, with all that it holds and promotes.] [I remember asking a question against the white guy's life story--there are many people like this who'll happily spin their tale even if it is filled with sadness and other weights. I noted that I thought it went on too long, because I got the point of it early. Rome asked what I would suggest but I didn't have a solution. Reading it this time I wasn't distracted by this thought. But I wonder now how it would read if it was summarised to a paragraph description of the themes of the story the character tells and the way he performs it as a story, as a character portrait rather than a seperate narrative. And on top of that raise the subjects that drive the narrator to comment on it, the controlling white guy, asian-fetishist commentary etc. At the same time, summarising it would limit this hateful voice in the book which I wonder if it is distracting. It is unpleasant.]
Holy shit. romesh is good. Visceral breakfast dropping moment.
Maybe I was reading for prose, that first time around, and not for story. Though I understood it I knew there wasn’t going to be a conclusion. As a stand-alone section it works in painting this tragic character. With the third section there is a satisfying change in his life where things are working out—but there had to be a change, at least in the narrator (but he couldn’t help having fallen to tragedy at the start as he didn’t feel supported in who he was by the place he was in etc.!)
Romesh knows the chef character so well. Implements cooking into narrative and character moments. Puffy “cryer’s” eyes from late night cooking.
To be obsessed with an actress because her character makes gazpacho in-film.
But realises it was the director that had her making gazpacho! What does creating relationships with these distant people say, “Pedro and me.”? If it affects your art (I don’t think Almodovar is teaching a chef anything.)
I think I should start looking at novels as personal collections of references. When an author specifically chooses Pedro Almodovar despite no obvious connection (neuroticism?) to the work at hand, that’s a part of the author’s character. Pop culture references are something I have to question. Sometimes they’re cheap, whether that’s cheap as a reference, etc. like throwing dirt like dice, it works as a simile to show the relaxed manner he is gambling with the procedure of grief and funerals but it doesn’t relate to cheffing, we must know from that he has played dice games before.
Fixate on “toot paper” being in the published work.
Specific cheffing neuroticism. First, having fantastical crushes on customers. Second, picturing one’s own insides while preparing meat “clicking and grinding of cartilage”; and the porky smell of burnt skin; this brought on after writing about sliced up palm wounds. I felt ill. I’d read up to Part Two. This is new to me now.
This narrator is as or more complicated than Pip Adam’s ‘Nothing to See.’ The identity of the character is layered in ways that surprise Romesh and the reader, and feel real. Romesh’s book is half the length, yay.
Zebedee says he needs to reread ‘The Island’ part. He rushed it to get back to the food. Salt is important too. But I saw why there was so much reverence for romesh from Zeb. Romesh wrote a food novel. And after ‘The Island’ section, you really do get food. All sorts of dishes over a dinner party. And a simple scone after vivid and satisfying cafe renovation (felt like a Tycoon video game). The new shop is a place you want to be and support, for the comfort of place, people, and food!
When Stella was reading this book she texted me amongst saying how “so very amazing” it is, “Omg, grapefruit eating scene, he GETS it.” “Cooking with his ma and anxestors woah pinprick tears in my eyes as I turned each page.”
Seeing Paul’s IG story soon after the book hit shelves was nice. A photo of the book, grass, and allusion to the act of reading it. That people who know romesh are reading it, yay!
Maybe it shouldn’t have been a grapefruit at the end, maybe it should’ve been a fruit from here or there, or both, closest I can think is a kiwi fruit being a Chinese fruit with a key identity in Aotearoa. What’s a Sri Lankan/Kazakh/Korean/Russki fruit that has the same effect..? Romesh tried to tell me it’s pop fiction. I countered, “the narrator is too complex, the references reach far” [grapefruit at that moment resists being on-the-nose] they make curious abstractions of it.
I am wondering on choices to have Almodovar at the start; then Indian, Korean and British media at the opposite end of the book. The references are as complex as a person’s taste. They are at least paying respects to the art that has made an artist (inherent). Almodovar’s Spain lives in the xenophobic part of the narrator’s perspective, or, put more lightly, when he is confused about his identity. Satyajit Ray, Park Chan-wook, and an English guy belong to the section where the narrator has accepted his lot, with the will to be varied. [This is getting analytical.]
The double sided perspective this book shares of: the results of our society's perpetual inequality and the segregation created by that inequality on POC, and the things that make community for POC—culture and like-minded people. We shouldn't be begging the question of why POC need these spaces, we should ask why Devendra didn't feel supported or safe in the world when he lost his mother. We shouldn't read and desire exotic foods cooked by the people that will know the food better than us when they remain behind a closed kitchen door. That's not healthy. We should go to these restaurants (and tip). But not maintain that divide: to have a table of six rude white people in such a restaurant isn't righteous, that's inequality. It's inequality if even one of those people can't go home and cook with as many spices.
There's also something to be said of the Y2K perspective. Where part of our social lives from c.MSN through to 2015 was DMing at home, these conversations maybe more private and strange and full of character than the ones you might have on the edges of the schoolyard. Cartoons on the TV. Not looking after oneself, not learned how yet. The exchange between the narrator and Aisha at her house is weighted, with all that history. And it is historical, in that way, of that time.
[At the launch the publisher called it a sad book (grief!) And from the publisher it feels a definitive statement. Romesh maintains it’s funny (in a way that pokes fun at neuroticism, but must first be read from the perspective of one with tricky mentality)!]
I had been excited for the book launch when I knew the book had landed at THW. And that initial excitement was nothing to what I felt the past week. I was smiling all day walking around town in circles doing the most intensive drafting work on my novella—3k+ words within a few hours! Time was passing in twenty minute several hundred word chunks it was awesome! I was keening for the work in Te Awe library—breathing loudly, burping from large kebab indigestion and suppressing exclamations at the words I was typing! Under my breath escaped a “ohh” that wanted to become something more and louder. It’s so cool that prose writing can come this easily through a keyboard versus my necessity to draft on paper for screenplay format—I don’t know what it is. I think there’s so many angles the character’s voices have to come around that the inorganic mode of staring at screen kills their clashing voices. It’s all psychological.
At the launch when I saw romesh, crossing the road with Saraih, as Stella and I sat outside picking through an $8.90 end of day katsu bowl, I raised my fist and shook it victoriously: “ROMESH!” (Part of my excitement was that I might see and share in romesh’s victory with several people I care about, the two key players who tapped out were my sister and Kelda. Sorely missed.)
I read up on ‘Amma’ the other book launched jointly—touching how connected (felt so real at the launch!) romesh and Sariah have been as writers over the course of both book’s lives and ongoing. ‘Amma’ sounds like an emotional-power-work and must-read. Can’t not read it now I know about it! Romesh and Saraih’s speeches for each other outdid both their guest speakers! Because they were heartfelt and lovingly eloquent in a way that comes from emotional investment, there was so much meaning for both of them to share that moment!
I vowed to really READ the book. There’s nothing else I could do but to really READ it. That would be a disservice. It should go with out saying, but I have to tell myself to make sure I do READ ‘When I Open the Shop,’ moreso than the early draft. (I can see a jaded point where one reads the early drafts super intensely so as to try their hand at influencing something, then flicks through the finished one until they hit the acknowledgments page and cry that their name isn’t gilded in its own box at the top.) I’m so excited to see all the work that has gone into the book. Editing is such a crazy process! Ngā mihi, romesh.
Stella bought it for her dad, but read it first. She texted me about a scene where the narrator cooks with his ancestors. I think she thought I’d read the whole book already. I didn’t know how this scene would materialise, I imagined spectres swirling around the narrator’s frying pan handle holding hand. That was a very anime idea. [Later I would read a cooking scene with anime stylisation in my mind, the animated forced perspective going crazy.] It’s been weird recently with ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ how blatantly coded some of these “fantasy” narratives are—caste systems, indigenous elves etc. In ‘Final Fantasy XV’ Gladiolus asks Noctis if he’s ready to face his ancestors with what strength he has; then he berates Noctis to “be serious,” Noctis’ “vitality” increases. (The game gives you two options for Noctis’ decision making brat or benevolence. I’ve been benevolent, I made a political ally when there were such funny bratty options. If I didn’t respect this game’s story I’d be doing the funny options. The medieval politics are serious (and epic) to me.)
The differences between romesh’s narrator and Noctis are vast. Noctis’ is closer to an American facing Irish ancestry. It is less important to NOW.
I’ve been procrastinating reading ‘When I Open the Shop.’ I think I could get to Goodreads’ word limit like this. This has all been lead up.
I have to approach the book as reading something casually. I can always come back for more. There will never be a perfect time to read it, there will simply be a time!
That Vic Cafe meeting with romesh before their move to Melbourne featured talk about Beckett and Camus. The opening line makes me think I’ll be more connected to the references to absurdist lit, the dissociative narrator/character. Maybe the reading to give notes ruined reading it for me, it was a new experience for me. I don’t annotate books normally. There was some confusion behind that reading. [The book exceeds that opening reference--a nod--romesh wrote something else.]
I think romesh knows it was more of a social thing in the end. I don’t think I helped draft 2 & 3, I didn’t feel useful to the manuscript. Remains to be seen. Maybe I was useful to Romesh emotionally! [I said my notes were more “hype,” Romesh seemed to agree, or didn’t deny it. At the time I’d noted, as a personal thing I don’t like when books drop a named local location. It doesn’t really work when it’s one street of no significance, simply a location. Why should the book have to be placed? What does the book have to say about the chosen place? romesh’s book is placed definitively in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, and it is a part of the story. The identity of the book can’t be without this city, with all that it holds and promotes.] [I remember asking a question against the white guy's life story--there are many people like this who'll happily spin their tale even if it is filled with sadness and other weights. I noted that I thought it went on too long, because I got the point of it early. Rome asked what I would suggest but I didn't have a solution. Reading it this time I wasn't distracted by this thought. But I wonder now how it would read if it was summarised to a paragraph description of the themes of the story the character tells and the way he performs it as a story, as a character portrait rather than a seperate narrative. And on top of that raise the subjects that drive the narrator to comment on it, the controlling white guy, asian-fetishist commentary etc. At the same time, summarising it would limit this hateful voice in the book which I wonder if it is distracting. It is unpleasant.]
Holy shit. romesh is good. Visceral breakfast dropping moment.
Maybe I was reading for prose, that first time around, and not for story. Though I understood it I knew there wasn’t going to be a conclusion. As a stand-alone section it works in painting this tragic character. With the third section there is a satisfying change in his life where things are working out—but there had to be a change, at least in the narrator (but he couldn’t help having fallen to tragedy at the start as he didn’t feel supported in who he was by the place he was in etc.!)
Romesh knows the chef character so well. Implements cooking into narrative and character moments. Puffy “cryer’s” eyes from late night cooking.
To be obsessed with an actress because her character makes gazpacho in-film.
But realises it was the director that had her making gazpacho! What does creating relationships with these distant people say, “Pedro and me.”? If it affects your art (I don’t think Almodovar is teaching a chef anything.)
I think I should start looking at novels as personal collections of references. When an author specifically chooses Pedro Almodovar despite no obvious connection (neuroticism?) to the work at hand, that’s a part of the author’s character. Pop culture references are something I have to question. Sometimes they’re cheap, whether that’s cheap as a reference, etc. like throwing dirt like dice, it works as a simile to show the relaxed manner he is gambling with the procedure of grief and funerals but it doesn’t relate to cheffing, we must know from that he has played dice games before.
Fixate on “toot paper” being in the published work.
Specific cheffing neuroticism. First, having fantastical crushes on customers. Second, picturing one’s own insides while preparing meat “clicking and grinding of cartilage”; and the porky smell of burnt skin; this brought on after writing about sliced up palm wounds. I felt ill. I’d read up to Part Two. This is new to me now.
This narrator is as or more complicated than Pip Adam’s ‘Nothing to See.’ The identity of the character is layered in ways that surprise Romesh and the reader, and feel real. Romesh’s book is half the length, yay.
Zebedee says he needs to reread ‘The Island’ part. He rushed it to get back to the food. Salt is important too. But I saw why there was so much reverence for romesh from Zeb. Romesh wrote a food novel. And after ‘The Island’ section, you really do get food. All sorts of dishes over a dinner party. And a simple scone after vivid and satisfying cafe renovation (felt like a Tycoon video game). The new shop is a place you want to be and support, for the comfort of place, people, and food!
When Stella was reading this book she texted me amongst saying how “so very amazing” it is, “Omg, grapefruit eating scene, he GETS it.” “Cooking with his ma and anxestors woah pinprick tears in my eyes as I turned each page.”
Seeing Paul’s IG story soon after the book hit shelves was nice. A photo of the book, grass, and allusion to the act of reading it. That people who know romesh are reading it, yay!
Maybe it shouldn’t have been a grapefruit at the end, maybe it should’ve been a fruit from here or there, or both, closest I can think is a kiwi fruit being a Chinese fruit with a key identity in Aotearoa. What’s a Sri Lankan/Kazakh/Korean/Russki fruit that has the same effect..? Romesh tried to tell me it’s pop fiction. I countered, “the narrator is too complex, the references reach far” [grapefruit at that moment resists being on-the-nose] they make curious abstractions of it.
I am wondering on choices to have Almodovar at the start; then Indian, Korean and British media at the opposite end of the book. The references are as complex as a person’s taste. They are at least paying respects to the art that has made an artist (inherent). Almodovar’s Spain lives in the xenophobic part of the narrator’s perspective, or, put more lightly, when he is confused about his identity. Satyajit Ray, Park Chan-wook, and an English guy belong to the section where the narrator has accepted his lot, with the will to be varied. [This is getting analytical.]
The double sided perspective this book shares of: the results of our society's perpetual inequality and the segregation created by that inequality on POC, and the things that make community for POC—culture and like-minded people. We shouldn't be begging the question of why POC need these spaces, we should ask why Devendra didn't feel supported or safe in the world when he lost his mother. We shouldn't read and desire exotic foods cooked by the people that will know the food better than us when they remain behind a closed kitchen door. That's not healthy. We should go to these restaurants (and tip). But not maintain that divide: to have a table of six rude white people in such a restaurant isn't righteous, that's inequality. It's inequality if even one of those people can't go home and cook with as many spices.
There's also something to be said of the Y2K perspective. Where part of our social lives from c.MSN through to 2015 was DMing at home, these conversations maybe more private and strange and full of character than the ones you might have on the edges of the schoolyard. Cartoons on the TV. Not looking after oneself, not learned how yet. The exchange between the narrator and Aisha at her house is weighted, with all that history. And it is historical, in that way, of that time.
October 20, 2024
Ugh this book was beautiful. A lyrical piece of literature highlighting the journey of grief
December 1, 2024
A joy to read. A story of aloneness, grieving, fitting in, surviving. The protagonist who remains nameless for most of the book is a young man who has recently lost his mother. He is Sri Lankan, he came to Wellington with his parents as a child. I can't think of a more polar opposite than such a migration. As the story starts he is opening a very small eatery on The Terrace, in central Wellington cooking food from his childhood, making coffee. Barely surviving. There is no plot as such to the story, each chapter being a moment in time as he manages his life, trying to 'fit in' to the predominantly white world he finds himself in. Coming from Wellington myself, I loved reading about his travels and escapades in the region, not just the city streets and neighbourhoods but as far afield as Wairarapa and a hairy drive over the Remutaka hill, a foray into the Hutt Valley - it all felt like reading about the old home town. Eventually he finds his 'tribe', the perfect food to serve in his small shop, and in the last chapter some true joy. This is not a big book, and is perfect for an afternoon sitting or even over a weekend.
May 23, 2024
When I open the shop is a brilliant debut. A young man is grieving his recently deceased mum and battling life in his haphazard lunch cafe, he's making the meals she made and trying to connect with people through food but they just want coffee and cheese scones. dissanayake writes with vulnerability about being mixed race in Wellington, childhood memories of Sri Lanka, a missing Dad, a succession of run down homes and hilarious, relatable and sad flashbacks to being a teen at the turn of the millennium. When I open the shop is disjointed and experimental, the tone/time and style changes regularly, but throughout the voice is likeable, humble and dryly funny. I often get cultural cringe when I read about places I know but somehow dissanayake dodges this, I think because he also knows the places intimately and he writes about Wellington's people and places, flaws and all with care and clarity.
December 2, 2024
How to describe this book? It's a deeply personal story about a young migrant man in Wellington, New Zealand wading through grief, identity, purpose, life in general after his mother dies. Opening a small takeaway shop in the CBD, he struggles to find a clientele that fits his culinary interests. Told in a slightly jagged timeline that hops and jumps and has a few flashes into dreams/fantasy, you get to know Devendra through the changes his shop goes through. I could really feel the weight of the world on his shoulders through the writing, feeling it build until a dramatic accident breaks the tension and takes him through to a new phase in his life.
Really well written, fantastic descriptions of Wellington and it's suburbs and a particular rawness shows through many of the scenes. I look forward to more of romesh's work.
Really well written, fantastic descriptions of Wellington and it's suburbs and a particular rawness shows through many of the scenes. I look forward to more of romesh's work.
June 7, 2024
What a cosy, melancholy little book.
When I Open the Shop, the debut novel from Romesh Dissanayake is a story about grief, about carrying the experiences of family, about racism, about resilience and about finding your place even if it's a smelly little shop that isn't doing very well.
It's kind of funny and kind of sad and beautifully written. It is not action packed but our protagonist learns a lot about himself and the style of writing makes you want to keep learning alongside him.
(I think) we can all relate to feeling out of place and feeling a bit strange. I really enjoyed learning about the way our protagonist experiences those same feelings in his own way.
When I Open the Shop, the debut novel from Romesh Dissanayake is a story about grief, about carrying the experiences of family, about racism, about resilience and about finding your place even if it's a smelly little shop that isn't doing very well.
It's kind of funny and kind of sad and beautifully written. It is not action packed but our protagonist learns a lot about himself and the style of writing makes you want to keep learning alongside him.
(I think) we can all relate to feeling out of place and feeling a bit strange. I really enjoyed learning about the way our protagonist experiences those same feelings in his own way.
May 19, 2024
That thing where you're allowed to experiment more in your first book. I really liked how dissanayake's narrative never sits comfortably in any particular place or time or even form, instead building up a complex sense of immigrant existence in which achievement can't completely banish unease -- gotta just do the next thing, and the next, and the next. Great descriptions of food and cooking. Very detailed nods to Te Whanganui-a-Tara landmarks that will date the work in a hurry, including Le Moulin, the best bakery in the city.
April 10, 2024
The most important book for our generation of displaced sri lankans in new Zealand, or any immigrant anywhere in the world. I can't put into words how good this is, but it truly feels like being held, comforted and listened to for the first time. Such a short story but covers so many feelings and experiences that we as immigrant share but have been silenced by the west. I cannot stress how important this book is. Thank you Romesh for finally putting our story in the spotlight
August 5, 2024
Just a fun romp around the streets of Te Whanganui a Tara - I loved this book. Great insight to the migrant experience wrapped in the world of hospitality and ancestral recipes. I had a good chuckle at the chapter “Flour and Cheese” and shed a tear reading “anxestors in the glass”. This book oscillates brilliantly between past and future, hope and sadness and leaves the reader with a satisfying “can’t beat Wellington on a good day” finish.
November 13, 2024
When I open the shop is a tale of grief, of longing, of finding a place in the world and forging a path forward. It's a beautiful tale full of passion, pain, family of origin and chosen family. Wellington steals the scene, with every location recognisable and familiar over a 10-year period. And then there are the beautifully detailed descriptions of food, flavours and textures that will leave you wanting more.
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June 22, 2024Really enjoyed reading. It has the feeling of a memoir rather than a novel. I liked being challenged with the mix of forms and the introduction of characters without warning or context, and the gaps left unsaid. It ignores the rules and made me hungry at the same time.
April 8, 2024
I really enjoyed this book. It was a random buy from the bookshop and i am definitely glad i picked it up. A quicker read, but that did not mean that it lacked detail. 4.5/5 stars would def recommend
August 20, 2024
Pleasantly surprised by how much I grew into loving this short novel. A subtle love letter to Wellington too. Maybe a little too rushed for an ending but
September 24, 2024
loved it entirely
October 3, 2024
Beautifully detailed. I read this book while I was overseas after having been out of Wellington for a while and it made me homesick.
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October 6, 2024ch 70 p1
A skeptic was asking about torment that is bound to happen to disbelievers; there will be no defence against it.
A skeptic was asking about torment that is bound to happen to disbelievers; there will be no defence against it.
October 17, 2024
I enjoyed parts of this but kinda lost the flow with some of the flashbacks and interludes.
October 27, 2024
3.5 started off great but I personally found the flow a bit hard to follow and probably didn’t get some of the plot points. Love a Wellington-based story lol
December 19, 2024
What a fantastic book, which someone else called a “gem” and I could not agree with them more!
December 21, 2024
The first book I’ve read set in Te Whanganui a Tara and oh I miss that city!
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
August 11, 2024
This was a very quirky story that enthralled me greatly. It touched on grief, newfound family, and identity.
Grief is linear, and sometimes it takes a while to "move on," which I thought the story explored very well. My words aren't doing it justice, but I'd highly recommend this to others.
Grief is linear, and sometimes it takes a while to "move on," which I thought the story explored very well. My words aren't doing it justice, but I'd highly recommend this to others.
October 26, 2024
A brilliant tale of grief and growing pains that will be especially realateable to anyone who spent their formative years in Pōneke.
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