“A Fearless Inventory”: A Review of Anurag Andra’s Submarine
“And I tell him our story, not all of it, but the important things…”
Anurag Andra’s debut novella from Split/Lip Press, Submarine is a study in urgency and economy, in telling stories not in their entirety—for when can any story be told “entirely”?—but through life’s most significant moments, and the cycles and connections that form between. Told in a series of vignettes, each self-contained yet threaded tightly together, Submarine traces the coming of age of Subramaniam, a second-generation immigrant of Indian descent, as he navigates the world from childhood to early adulthood. Throughout, he reckons with his relationship to home, family, and self: a demanding, at times violent father; discrimination in the aftermath of 9/11; love and friendship deferred; the casualties of “the American dream.” This is a story, as its title suggests, of going deep below the surface. It’s a reflection on the seeming impossibility of being truly understood, or truly understanding others—and the absolute necessity that, still, always, we try.
Andra’s writing is deceptively plainspoken with a gentle humor and a careful ear for rhythm. There is remarkable restraint in passages that take their time, pulling the reader along, their movement as mesmerizing as observing the tide. But with that restraint comes a persistence, and a sharpness, so it’s easy to imagine Submarine read in a fierce whisper. In vignettes that range from immediate to dreamlike, Andra layers recurring images that deftly capture the experience of memory: how these echoes from our past appear in brief, bright flashes, only to disappear again as fast as they came. Time and time again, Sub revisits these memories: cameras on prom night, a flooded college bathroom, a motel by the ocean, his mother’s hands, his father’s. Each key moment finds a parallel moment elsewhere in his life, at which point Sub gets to try again, to do things differently this time.
Submarine stands out for the complexity of its characters and the messiness of their relationships, expressed in dozens of delicate, meaningful gestures: the squeeze of a shoulder, a nearly inaudible murmur, a threat through gritted teeth. The silence before “Goodbye.” The pause before “Never mind.” In all these gestures and hesitations are the characters’ bids for connection, their attempts—and, often, failings—to form deeper, more honest bonds with the people they love. To say what they mean, and be seen as they are. To be vulnerable in a society that treats vulnerability as a weakness, and to find compassion and forgiveness for those who have hurt them the most. In taking inventory of his life thus far, Sub learns that the most difficult person to be honest with, to find compassion and forgiveness for, and to truly understand is often yourself.
“Outside, the moon glints like the eye of some distant god, and for a moment, I wonder if this is the one I should have prayed to all these years. The one who might have answered, who would have told me all the things I never would have told myself: That they always have to go, the ones you love the most, the ones that let you hide from them the parts of you they know the best.”
Throughout the novella, Andra weaves in intertextual references that, while unnamed, are likely to be familiar to readers of Sub’s generation. These books and films—which take as their subjects fathers and sons, names and identity, sleep and dreams, migration, escape—offer additional parallels in a novella already full of them, holding a mirror up to Sub’s own preoccupations and the events in his life. They remind the reader that no story, however it’s told, exists in a vacuum, and that every story is another story repeated, refracted. Sub finds pieces of himself in the stories he reads and watches, just as readers of Submarine are sure to find pieces of themselves in this story of a young man grappling with what came before him, and looking ahead toward what comes next.
Anurag Andra is a fiction writer currently based in Arlington, VA. He was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Bridgewater, NJ. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado Boulder and undergraduate degree(s) in Economics and Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, and his short fiction can be found in journals such as Ninth Letter, Necessary Fiction, Atticus Review and elsewhere. In his spare time, Anurag enjoys a good hike followed by a good beer, watching football (Go Birds), and spending time with his wife, friends and family. You can find him on Twitter as @AnuragAndra and on Instagram as @aandra0615.
Kristina Ten is a Russian-American writer living in Colorado. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, Nightmare, Fantasy, Gulf Coast, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. A graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop and a copywriter in a past life, she is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she teaches creative writing and serves as prose editor of TIMBER. You can find her on Twitter as @kristina_ten.