TELL ME HOW TO BE

From the author of If You See Me, Don't Say Hi (a NYTBR Choice and NPR Best Book of the Year praised by Celeste Ng and Rumaan Alam) TELL ME HOW TO BE is a darkly funny and poignant novel about an Indian-American mother and son confronting the secrets of their past.

One year after the death of his father, Akash, a songwriter in Los Angeles, is living a double life, sharing an apartment with his boyfriend while evading his mother's pleas that he find a wife. When Akash learns his mother has sold his childhood home in Illinois in order to move back to London, he returns to pack up his things, honor the death of his father, and mend his strained relationships with his mother and brother. What he doesn't anticipate is running into Parth - a childhood friend with whom he'd shared his first romantic connection.
Meanwhile, his mother, Renu, is nurturing her own secrets, as she reconnects with Kareem, the man she almost married and spent her marriage pining for. As their pasts catch up with them over the course of a dramatic week, Akash and Renu must decide between the lives they left behind and the ones they've since created.

Set in a midwestern town simmering with racial tension and repressed desire, Tell Me How to Be is a story of betrayal and the journey toward reconciliation. But most of all, it is a testament to the overpowering force of first love and how it teaches us to be in the world.

Neel Patel is a first-generation Indian American who grew up in Champaign, Illinois. His debut story collection, If You See Me, Don't Say Hi, was a New York Time Book Review Editor's Choice and was long-listed for the Story Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. He currently lives in Los Angeles. Tell Me How to Be is his debut novel.