Review: If You See Me, Don't Say Hi: Stories by Neel Patel

If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi: Stories
by Neel Patel

Oftentimes the only excuse I need to pick up a new book is that the title sounds unique enough. If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi sounds to me like a person’s passive cry for attention. I can appreciate that, despite its obnoxiousness. Most of the short story collections I have gotten into in the last few years have impressed me with their sincere intensity and depth of emotion. The title piece is about the ways in which two brothers have sometimes happily destroyed and over the years struggled to rebuild their relationship in their early adulthood. Many of the stories related romantic love, in all of its forms, and the ways in which it doesn’t last. Keeping up or failing to fulfill parental expectations, and the damage that can be done by parental gossip also played dramatic roles in this collection. I found that many characters had very “millenial” problems, such as using social media to their own detriment, and that worked well for me as a reader, but it might unfortunately date the book in a few years.

[ official If You See Me Don’t Say Hi page on the official Neel Patel web site ]

Recommended by Naomi S.
Eiseley Branch Library

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