Nine-year-old Meena can’t wait to grow up and break free from her parents. But as the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the mining village of Tollington her struggle for independence is different from most.Meena wants fishfingers and chips not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities - but more than anything she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang.Blonde cool aloof outrageous and sassy Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita’s life but the arrival of a baby brother teenage hormones impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future threaten to turn Anita’s salad days sour.Anita and Me paints a comic poignant compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares power cuts glam rock decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies a childhood caught between two cultures each on the brink of change.In Anita and Me Meera Syal masterfully captures the essence of a childhood caught between two cultures making it a top pick in the realm of literary fiction. The narrative filled with the best elements of humour compassion and vivid imagery offers a unique perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a multicultural society.For fans of Cgp Books (GCSE English Shakespeare Text Guide) Andrew Bruff (Mr Bruff’s guide to 'Macbeth') William Golding (The Spire) Kazuo Ishiguro (Klara and the Sun) and Jane Austen (Mansfield Park).
