Why is Nobody Laughing by Yasmin Rahman follows 16 year old Ibrahim who has entered a stand up comedy competition only to find out that he’s starting having panic attacks.
Ibrahim’s life is hard. His parents don’t speak fluent English and he’s always having to help out with reading messages, paying bills and accompanying his parents to appointments. He’s juggling all of this with his school work and helping around the house to pack school lunches for his siblings and wash his brother’s football kit or feeding his little sister. There is always an endless list of tasks to be done and he is feeling resentful that his parents aren’t taking on as much as other people’s parents appear to.
His best mate Dexter’s Dad seems to be the perfect parent. Interested in everything the boys are doing and on top of everything. He’s caring to the point that Dexter seems to be actively embarrassed by it. Ibrahim can’t quite understand why Dexter acts like this and feels like his friend has the best Dad.
Dexter and Ibrahim have entered the comedy competition together. They are both very encouraging of the other and of their comedy and help each other work on routines. Only Ibrahim is embarrassed of his parents and his home life and doesn’t want Dexter to find out about the chores and broken English. He doesn’t want to speak Bengali in front of his friend so he avoids going anywhere near his family when Dexter is around, making up excuses to go somewhere else.
It hurts Ibrahim deeply that his family aren’t interested in the things that are so important to him like comedy and that he can’t tell them for fear they wouldn’t understand. That he might not be allowed to continue with the competition. He has to lie to keep going.
The stress of all of this accumulates the first time that he goes on stage at the competition and he has the symptoms of what he keeps telling himself is not a panic attack.
A girl at the community centre called Sura helps him with calming down and provides him with some coping techniques for when he next begins to panic. He agrees to try them out as anything has to be better than this.
The Sura character is where this book gets a bit weird. For most of the book it is not clear if Sura is actually real or an imaginary character that Ibrahim can create when at his most desperate. She appears only when he is having a panic attack. He doesn’t seem sure if she is real or not and as such neither are we the reader.
It is an odd choice to have a character who might not be real and who can reveal more of what is happening in the lives of other characters than a real person could but it does actually work quite well in this book. I did like the character and her interactions with Ibrahim. I think it does add something extra to the book though you do have to suspend your disbelief. It’s a clever device in the story and enriches the book.
A poignant look at mental health for the young and especially for those in Asian communities and for young men. Mental health is still something not discussed as much as it should be with many inaccurate assumptions often made about it. This is a really helpful read for young people who may be experiencing mental health issues though it does escalate very quickly from the central character being struck by their first panic attack to something more serious. I would say not for too young a reader but very helpful for older teenagers. There are some genuinely helpful coping devices present in the book which could help someone who is not yet ready to seek therapy, something that Ibrahim is so adamant he doesn’t want to experience in the book. Possibly the character is a little too vehemently against therapy for someone with no experience of it but a lot of people don’t think they need it so it is unfortunately not an unrealistic view.
A fascinating young adult book on mental health in young people and how best to talk about our problems and make life easier. When to get help and how to connect back with your friends, family and the world.
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