Hurrah – a book set north of the Watford Gap. I enjoyed the descriptions of life in Blackburn, having personal knowledge of the area. Rafi is encouraged by his mother to emulate the Bollywood stars of her youth. As he becomes ready to enter the senior school system he is suddenly expected to “man up”, become a macho man which is totally against his nature.
In a series of flashbacks his back story unfolds and explains how he leaves the hard environment of his home area to become a star performer residing in Australia.

It is a well written novel but there are no surprises – no “I didn’t see that coming” moments.

What a brilliant debut novel, tackling difficult topics with unwavering, unapologetic honesty. It’s Billy Elliot told through the eyes of a young Pakistani boy growing up in Northern England in the 1970s.

Told in a dual timeline, we learn about adult Rafi and his life in Australia with the man he loves and Rafi the child who grew up poor and tormented in a small town, in a country that didn’t want him.

——
Rafi Aziz grew up during ABBA’s heyday, when Bollywood was king — and he is here for it.

It’s obvious from the start that young Rafi is a gifted musician and singer, pounding out tunes on a toy piano, effortlessly adding harmonies to songs where none existed. And, as the baby of three, he is unmistakably his mother’s favorite. She, too, is a lover of music, color, and patterns, and she encourages him to sing and dance.

Until she doesn’t.

It becomes obvious to Rafi that other than best friend Shazia, the other kids, including his older brother, don’t accept him, making fun of him, beating him up, leaving him fearful of the upper school he’s meant to attend.

But there is no word in the Pakistani language for gay, no acknowledgment of it because it simply doesn’t exist. Rafi can’t exist as he wants.

When he wins a scholarship to a music school, Rafi leaves home at ten years old and never looks back. For him, it’s a matter of survival. He needs to find a place where he belongs, turning his back on a family that doesn’t accept him.

But there is another story here, a quieter one, a more delicate one, the story of a Pakistani woman who didn’t want to move from her home to another country, a person who could neither read nor write, a mother raising three kids ostensibly on her own.

A woman who struggles between a country and its beliefs and the love of an unapologetically flamboyant son. Being a mother, her story gently reminds you, isn’t ever easy. You give your whole self to someone and hope that they can find happiness. That you want ease and acceptance and joy but understanding you can’t control any of it.

This emotionally charged coming of age story dives into family, self-love, and belonging, and doesn’t apologize when things get difficult. Even when Rafi is selfish, self indulgent, when he realizes he wasn’t always right, you love him just the same.

Maybe even a little more.

It’s Pride Month, and it’s a time in the world when we should lift the voices of authors like Iqbal Hussain. Please, do yourself a favor and read this one. It’ll make you feel all the things.

Thanks to @netgalley and @unbound for the eARC. This one comes out June 6, 2024.

If you loved Billy Elliot, this book is for you. A wonderful story that will warm your heart and whisk you away into the world of a young Pakistani boy and his dreams. The story follows Rafi Aziz’s life from growing up in Blackburn in the 1970’s to his return in the early years of 2000.

Rafi knows he is different but the world of dress up and music will ensure his life is destined for greatness, it is just as a child he does not know this yet, all he does know is that he has dreams and desires that he wishes to fulfil. His family have other ideas, but it is his mother that as a young child unwittingly encourages these dreams, singing, and dancing with him but she tells him this is only in the inside world, not outside which is something Rafi struggles to understand. He lives in a world of few friends and every day at school is a struggle. One person he does have in his corner is Mr H, his music teacher and one that will have a wonderful impact on his life, encouraging him and telling him it is ok to be himself.

Soon Rafi wins a music school scholarship, leaves home and his dreams begin but to the detriment of his family and a mother who wished to just raise her children unobtrusively, wishing her son would grow up to be a doctor or accountant, careers she feels she can identify with and that will bring respect to the family. This is a story of being true to your identity and not allowing others to take this away from you, Rafi may not realise this when he is young, but he is strong, resilient and more talented than he can imagine.

A brilliant book that I highly recommend. Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for an advanced copy, all opinions expressed are my own.

This was one book I almost didn’t continue past the first four chapters but I am so glad I did.
The story centres on a young boy called Rafi who is determined to live out his dreams despite opposition from his family, noticeably his mother and his older brother.
There is quite a lot of time jumps in this story some which feel like they could have been explained better as I was left confused by a few of them.
Rafi is not a typical Pakistani muslim boy, he prefers dressing up and the arts to football and academic studies, his mother is alternating between supportive and unsupportive, concerned by what the wider community would think.
Rafi returns some twenty years later, now living in Australia and big star in his own right to reconnect with his family and see how the wider community he lived in has changed.
Thanks to Net Galley and Unbound for the advanced ARC of this book.

Meet 10-year-old Rafi Aziz, your next Bollywood star! The youngest of three growing up in 1980s Lancashire, England, born to a hard-working father and overly indulgent mother in a traditional Pakistani neighborhood where his mother is always concerned with "what will the neighbors think?". He was born into a patriarchal society filled with cultural taboos and strong family expectations.

Childhood is filled with challenges, and at times trauma - Rafi's is filled with both. Rafi never feels like he fits in with his peers in the neighborhood or school, has few friends, is the target of bullies, loves to sing, dance, and make music rather than play sports, and is quite emotional. His beloved music teacher, Mr. H refers to him as "a butterfly among bricks". He doesn't understand how or why he is "different. His favorite activity with his only friend Shazia is dressing up (makeup and all) as Agnetha from ABBA, singing and dancing in true Bollywood style rather than playing football with the boys as his mother so often suggests.

Rafi's big chance to shine comes when his choir is asked to sing on TV with ABBA. He idolized ABBA, knows every song and dance step, and sees this as a step toward his Bollywood goal. Even though his mother always encourages and often joins in with Rafi's singing and dancing, she refuses to sign his permission slip for the trip. This is the beginning of the negativity he faces as his parents expect him "to be a good boy" who becomes a doctor or accountant, marries Pakistani girl, and has a big family as tradition dictates. Does he conform or break free? He struggles as he realizes he cannot make his parents happy/proud and yet be true to himself.

Follow Rafi's life (in dual timeline form) from age 10 to today as he navigates prejudices, loss, family fractures, success, failure, love, and truly finding peace with himself.

As I read this I frequently wondered how much Rafi's story paralleled the early life of Farrokh Bulsara aka the late Freddie Mercury of Queen. The day I finished reading this I also read that ABBA was awarded knighthood from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. Rafi would have swooned!

Thank you NetGalley and Unbound for the allowing me to read this ARC.

Raw, honest and sad, this book gives insight into topics that are so often swept under the rug by South Asian communities. I loved the authors voice and his storytelling skills, and the light he shed on “taboo” topics in today’s society. An enjoyable and easy read!

A heartfelt story of a young Pakistani boy growing up in the 1980's where the NF marches were frequent and AIDS was a coming to the forefront in the world.
Raif is a young Muslim boy who loves the flamboyant lifestyle of Bollywood and ABBA. He has to take on his family and community for his wishes, as well as coming to terms with the fact that he is gay.
Later in the book, we find him as an adult living in Australia, he returns back to the UK and his world falls apart.
This book made me laugh and cry. A great debut novel.

This book has been billed as 'Billy Elliot meets Bend It Like Beckham' but I think that's selling this novel short. I totally understand why novels are often billed as x meets y but I worry that it might imply a derivative nature. This is a unique narrative and a story that has been crying out to be told.

Personal story-time (with apologies, this is a pretty common feature in my reviews when I relate deeply with a protagonist). I am British and I come from an Indian Bengali Hindu background. In Asian communities, at the risk of generalising: 1. People are not encouraged, or are indeed actively discouraged, to pursue the arts. 2. Homosexuality is still pretty invisible.

I'm a lesbian and even though my parents are entirely accepting, I wouldn't dream of coming out to anyone in the community. I was visiting my parents this past weekend and my mother's friend came over. During the usual catch-up conversation, she asked me if I was thinking of men and marriage in the near future. There's always the temptation to just confess 'I'M GAY' and watch the person's reaction - apparently even my mother was tempted to do it this time - but it really doesn't feel worth it. I don't expect outright condemnation, but I certainly expect the atmosphere to be immediately uncomfortable, so I really related to that aspect of the book.

This novel contains the increasingly popular structure of starting in the present, then going back and forth from the past. The past section begins in 1981, where Rafi lives with his parents in Blackburn. I was kid in the late nineties/early noughties and Rafi is from a Pakistani Muslim background so I can't pretend to fully understand his experience, but one does not need to in order to understand what Rafi goes through. Hussain is an absolutely wonderful writer and everyone can relate to being a child and responding to an unfair society, at an age when it's impossible to understand why on earth the world is so flawed, and why the adults don't just fix it.

In the present, roughly late 2001/2002 (stated as several months after 9/11), Rafi is a musical theatre star living in Australia with his loving boyfriend. His best friend's wedding brings him back to the UK, where he struggles to reconcile his genuine identity with a community that is still largely hostile to gay people.

I loved the way that relationships were written in this book. A special shout-out to the character of Mr H, Rafi's music teacher, who in a classic case of dramatic irony is evidently a gay man to the reader, with Rafi none the wiser at the time.

What really moved my heart was Rafi's relationship with his mother. She absolutely adores her son and we feel it in her dialogue and actions, but she also struggles with Rafi being a gender nonconforming boy who prefers dressing up to football, and singing to academic studies. There is a scene between an adult Rafi and his mother late in the novel which made me sob. I will not elaborate further, to avoid spoilers, but it is the strongest scene in the novel for me. I found the ending very satisfying and I'll be eagerly looking out for more work from this author.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Unbound for the ARC!

It is scary of how much this novel resonates with me personally, and how much I share with the protagonist, to living in Australia and sharing the cultural Pakistani back ground with the protagonist … right down to particular kind bullying - the shared experience hits much harder and deeper for someone like myself. When the author mentions a song from Pakeezah, about weather being romantic and finding sweetheart, I know it is Mausam hai Aashiqana or another RD Burman song about youth and love I know it is Do Lafzon ki hai yeh kahaani - or like references to the words makeupshakeup, the broken English or even

Northern boy is an emotionally charged coming of age debut by Iqbal Hussain that delves into a lot of themes of belonging, self reflection, acceptance and family dynamics. Sure it is a billy Elliot style story of a creative soul trying to break free from his conservative surroundings and follows the expected beats of it all, growing up, love for ABBA, desires and dreams of being a showman, Bollywood music and mother son relationship, it also reminded me of Fourteen by Shannon Molloy.. but it is much more than that - it is about letting go, letting go of prejudices, self criticism and letting go of grudges and realising one is a product of their circumstances and sometimes more similar to the people the ones you avoid becoming and dislike - but the writer does not spare the protagonist from showing the mirror on this conundrum and their flaws as well holding them accountable - the writer tells as much as shows this where the protagonist’s behaviour before the confrontation and consequences of their actions flipping over their victim card half way through the book.

The big climax scene has been set up well especially between the main mother-son relationship and how it transpires. The generational trauma of displacement, homesickness and a sense of seeing the other side of life of people surrounding you, seeing every one has their own struggles and seeing them as people rather than an extension of a relationship you share with them and how those traumas affect you as an adult

Yes the book is long and yes there is a lot there and yes there are at least three books in here but the life either does not happen in solitude incidents either with things happening all the same time. It does try to explore a lot. The book does not over indulges its settings, but It could be edited down. Some words could use hyphens but I am nitpicking here. The novel does rush through towards the end but it needed that ending

A wholesome debut that explores a multitude of facets that could come across as bit ticking off on every trope but then all those have come about from lived experiences. I can’t wait to have this on my bookshelf and especially that playlist surprise at the end. Queer brown South Asian stories are difficult to come by and this one is a charming one at that.

Thank you NetGalley and Unbound publishers for the e-ARC in exchange for an independent review

Although I was very honored to be able to read an early copy of this book, the writing was too hard for me to understand,.

This is an emotionally charged novel about a young Pakistani boy growing up in Bradford. Often attired in dresses he is not averse to comments about his sexuality. His lifetime ambition is to become a movie star and this is further encouraged by an American music teacher in his junior school amidst the background of a community who do not tolerate different behaviours. As Rafi matures his individual character develops and to escape the tensions and prejudices he moves to Australia and rekindles his relationship with his childhood friend David.

Beautifully written, with empathy and compassion, this novel shows the struggles of a Muslim Pakastani family separated by distance and a lack of acceptance to modern relationships.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this engaging e-ARC in return for an independent review.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy in return for an honest review!

A good, heart-warming debut which I liked reading and which gave me 'Bollywood, Billy Elliot vibes', but with important themes (family, identity, authenticity, courage) scattered within, too.

The book is set in the early 00s, when Rafi Aziz - a successful, queer, Aussie-based producer of stage musicals - returns to the UK to attend his best friend's wedding. During his long flight, the story is broken up by scenes from his childhood in 1980's Blackburn exploring his history, family, reputation, and his desires/dreams.

Hussain writes from experience, authenticity and honesty, having grown up in a first-generation Pakistani household living in the mill towns of 1980's.

An interesting insight and worth a read!

Being a Northern Boy myself, I'm curious to see how this pans out.

In Australia in the present day, Rafi suddenly gets an invitation to his best girl friend's wedding, back home in Blackburn in the North of England. As he scrambles to make a red-eye from Melbourne, the mists of time part and we are thrust into his Eighties childhood, a decidedly fey child with a precocious vocabulary, coming off like Tallulah Bankhead in rainbow playwear. With the shift in locale and milieu, the language stays the same, an all-too-knowing adult narrative in the first person, peppered with contemporary pop culture references and five dollar words when ten cents would do.

Shifting back and forth between his present and his past, the book never stays in the same genre, with flashes of childhood innocence in the past alongside leaden prose, and a present that includes impromptu sex and both outright racism and microaggressions; and a final act that blindsides him (and me) with a rush of plot. I'm not sure who this novel is for: maybe it's supposed to be for everybody, but it fails in that.

Of course, with the Eighties as the backdrop for the past, the real world of the time can't be far behind: Thatcher, unemployment, naked racism, AIDS, and of course ABBA are threaded through Rafi's origin story, but more like a checklist rather than a thematic or symbolic motif or subtext. Smash Hits? Check. Terry Wogan? Check. Rubik's Cubes? Check.

The uniqueness of the Muslim community in Blackburn in the Eighties is probably better handled; but perhaps the autofiction nature of the book makes each of the family members and the wider circle of family, friends and enemies into stock characters from any pre-gay narrative: a traditional parent, a supportive parent who later isn't, a best girl friend, the macho brother, the bully and his henchmen, the myopic older woman, and so on, and so on. Invention seems to have abandoned the writer after devising a picaresque plot woven around music and self-determination, and perhaps it's trying to do too much in too many pages. I think the book could have been cut by about a third and not suffered.

There seem to be three great books hiding in here, waiting to be unearthed by the discerning reader (or editor): a charming 80s coming-of-age children's or teen novel, à la Billy Elliot (like the cover tagline), humming with the era's greatest pop music; a romcom of a gay best friend returning to his best girl friend's wedding and finding love and acceptance with a Bollywood soundtrack; and a family saga of British Asian lives from the Eighties to the late Tens, light comedy and high drama intertwined with loving portraits of a community in flux.

But this novel tries to be all those things, and on its way just can't quite reach the heights with any of them; as well as falling into the traps of any of these narratives: Kill All Your Gays, coming out of the closet, fish out of water romantic entanglements, unthinking bullying, one inspirational teacher amongst a load of dullards, snatching triumph from adversity, and so on.

For a first pass at a first novel, this isn't bad, but it could have done with a much stronger editorial hand. Saying all that, I'd be interested to see what comes next from Hussain, if it were more focused on a singular concept.

This is a very enjoyable debut.

On one level, you could take it as a Bollywood version of Billy Eliot. On many others, it is a meditation on family, being yourself, and the perils (real or perceived) of returning to your roots after forging your own life.

It's the early 2000s, Rafi Aziz, a successful, queer, Aussie-based producer of stage musicals, is returning to the UK for the wedding of his best friend. A long, long flight is broken up by a succession of scenes from his childhood in 1980's Blackburn as a first generation Pakistani immigrant. Rafi knows he's different. At first his mother indulges his love of singing and dancing. This changes abruptly when Rafi announces (with help from an inspirational music teacher) that he wants to make performing his life.

Iqbal Hussain writes with affection for growing up in a first-generation Pakistani household living in the mill towns of 1980's South Yorkshire. Affection but also a clear-eyed view of the difficulties of growing up queer at that time and as part of that community. Through this book, I thoroughly enjoyed being invited into the heart of a community I'm not part of.

A lovely touching book about growing up feeling like you are different to the rest of your peer group.

This book is touching and hopeful. It's like Billy Elliot has been transplanted into Bollywood!

Thanks Unbound and NetGalley for this ARC. I loved this book. As a person who comes from a similar culture as Iqbal Hussain, I so identify with a lot of the references even if we don't share all the same reference points. At the end of the day he is a boy of a patriarchal society and culture who has the weight of familial expectations, and cultural and religious taboos upon him.

And all he wants is Bollywood. He dreams in technicolour and would much rather wear the colours of the rainbow.

I loved this family saga told over a generation from the 70's to now... seeing the family saga, the coming of age and coming out with the backdrop of Bollywood is so beautifully written. I couldn't put it down till the last page was read. And the book stayed with me for a long time.

What a brilliant debut by Iqbal Hussain!
I love finding a voice where I can relate to the characters and the situations, and the story is compelling, too. This had all that in spades.
Northern Boy uses a dual timeline to tell the story of Rafi Aziz. It follows his childhood in Blackburn from the 1970s to the early 2000s as he returns home, ending with an ending in the present era.
Rafi Aziz is not your usual young Pakistani Muslim boy living in North England. He'd rather be dressing up with his best mate, Shazia, and dancing around her room, singing pop songs and Bollywood hits, than playing football with the rest of the lads.
Music has been a part of his growing up since he can remember, with a mother who sings with a beautiful voice around the house and dotes on her youngest son, encouraging her to join in with her all the time.
Things come to a head when the family realises that his talent is a passion, and he wants to pursue his love of music, singing, and dancing rather than become a doctor or an accountant.
Then, negativity starts, and "What would the neighbours/community say?" becomes more important than allowing Rafi to realise his dreams.
When we jolt forward, Rafi is older and more established as a well-known stage actor/performer, living a life he's sure his family would disapprove of in Australia. He heads back to his hometown for Shazia's wedding, where he has to deal with the fireworks and many concealed parts of his life are uncovered.
There were so many things I loved about this book. Rafi is a boy I could have met growing up. I knew of many who suppressed their interests because it wasn't the done thing.
I also really related to Maam, his mother, who was battling her cultural demons, missing her homeland, and wanting what was best for her children.
This is Billy Elliot, the British Pakistani Edit! An incredible immersion into the life of a boy who just wanted to follow his dreams.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Unbound for an ARC.

Although Rafi Aziz's family had very different plans for him when they emigrated from Pakistan to the UK, Rafi's interests lay elsewhere.

This is the British Pakistani version of Billy Elliott, but with a hometown boy whose success makes it harder, not easier for him to return home nearly two decades later.

Touching and wholesome, with a protagonist you will find yourself rooting for! It gets 3.5 stars.