THE PLEASURE SEEKER

A Sikh boy from a small African town becomes a global rock star in Michaels’ novel.

Dayal Singh, an Asian Sikh and the son of trafficked parents, grows up in Arusha, Tanzania. When Dayal is a child, someone gives his school a broken piano, which fascinates the boy. Later, he gets a chance to buy a piano of his own and immediately starts taking lessons. His love of music leads him to study the subject as one of his minors in college—he auditions for a music program at a school in Switzerland and gets into the orchestra. At school, he meets Peter van Heusen, Oscar Martinez, and Adam Boulanger; together, they start a band that ends up taking off (“That summer, in eight weeks, we visited forty cities in Europe”). Dayal tries to plan for his future, but his father wants him to marry a Sikh woman. Ever since he was a teenager, Dayal has been in love with Mara Glazer, a Jewish girl eight years his senior and the granddaughter of the man who bought Dayal’s father. As Dayal’s band gets bigger and bigger, he aims to settle down with a partner and agrees to an arranged marriage, but through the rocky next years of his life, his feelings never change—he remains madly in love with Mara. Taking place from the 1980s to the early 2000s, the novel reads like a fictional autobiography. Michaels demonstrates a command of history and provides a detailed look into African and Sikh culture across the decades, but the fast-paced narration only seems to work against this approach. Because much of the story is conveyed as a summary of events, readers may have difficulty forming a connection with any of the characters. Dayal is likely on the spectrum (which is mentioned once and briefly) and identifies as demisexual.

The novel tackles important cultural and historical issues but lacks emotional depth.