‘The Spoiled Heart’ by Sunjeev Sahota       (2024) – 329 pages

At the center of the novel ‘The Spoiled Heart’ is an election in England for leadership of the labor union Unify between Nayan Olak and Megha Sharma.

Nayan has the values of your traditional labor organizers, ie., it’s about the money.

“Because it is not a lack of respect the working class suffers from. It’s a lack of money. Of means.”

Nayan’s labor philosophy can be summed up by the following:

“Meaningful employment, good housing, a decent education….and we’ll only win those things if we organize and fight for them together.”

Meanwhile Megha is the head of the union’s D.E.I., an acronymn I’ve only recently encountered. It means “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”. Her main push is for diversity in the workplace, acceptance of people’s differences.

At the beginning, Nayan has a big lead in the union leader election, due to his long standing work for the union. However Megha accuses Nayan of racist behavior and even accuses Nayan of assaulting her by twisting her arm.

Since Nayan is the main character in ‘The Spoiled Heart’ and most of the novel revolves around his backstory, we necessarily get his point of view more than Megha’s.

And what a backstory it is. Nayan had a family of his own, a wife and a young son. However he lost both his mother and his son in a fire resulting from his own father’s irresponsible behavior. Nayan’s father was “a pubber and a drinker, that he slept with women that weren’t his wife”.

“Yeah, he hated himself, his life.” Nayan gave a faint, low, exasperated growl. “Isn’t that usually why we treat others like shit? Jealousy, bitterness, self-hatred.”

A few years after they lost their young son, Nayan and his wife divorced, and now Nayan lives with his now doddering father. Much of ‘The Spoiled Heart’ revolves around Nayan’s affair with a neighbor woman, Helen Fletcher, and her college age son Brandon. At one point, Brandon is also falsely accused of racist behavior, so this is a theme that runs through this novel.

The author of ‘The Spoiled Heart’, Sunjeev Sahota, has a gift for creating scenes – both those that are domestic and those that are away from home – that are poignant and meaningful. I’m not sure that being falsely accused of racist behavior is as big a problem as it is made out to be here or at least not as big a problem as racist behavior itself, but the novel held my interest throughout.

Grade:    A-