Often Vassanji's characters are affected by race or migration, but really, their preoccupations are simply human, the stories not wandering too far from issues of friendship, marriage, children, sexuality, death and faith. Often these are juxtaposed with "external" strains within the story. For example, in the title story Diamond, meeting his college friend Rusty after years, the author finds himself trapped in his friend's obsession with Elvis. There are Elvis shrines, Ouija boards and eerie visits from the "Raja", but the parallel story is about Diamond's yearning for his wife, Sue, her betrayal, and her death from aids.

In Farida, a middle-aged man reflects on his relationship with his wife and the early stages of their marriage, but quite suddenly it becomes an insight into a father's acceptance of his son's homosexuality. In Her Two Husbands, the widow of a liberal, though aggressively cynical university professor finds herself married after his death to a seemingly gentler man, but who turns out much more frightening in his acceptance of the sexist attitudes of his spiritual adviser. The Trouble with Tea is ostensibly about the issue of whether it is appropriate or not to serve tea at early morning prayers in mosque, but the focus changes abruptly on the very last page to the nature of "enlightenment", the very point of those morning sessions.

Like certain characters, certain ideas too appear and reappear through the collection, making it far more interesting as a whole than any of the stories are individually. Despite the sometimes old-fashioned turn of phrase and often less than startling use of language, there is a lot of originality of subject matter here and no evidence of pandering to what "sells". Though this collection won't blow you away with its narrative explosions or epiphanic endings, it will charm you with the quiet, understated insights of its thinly sliced pieces of life.

Index