The End of a Story May Be a Beginning

Anurag Andra’s ‘Submarine’

Subramaniam narrates this novel, the story of his youth. Other schoolchildren giggle about his name as “submarine,” and the nickname sticks. Hence the title, Submarine, of this novel by Anurag Andra, published by Split/Lip.

The other meaning of the title—the deeper meaning, I should say — is that there’s lots going on beneath the surface for Subramaniam. There seems to be an unrecognized or unaired trauma or an unexamined belief. He’s observing himself and others as if perhaps the trajectory of his life were already determined and he need not make choices but simply wait for his life to draw some conclusion, as if his life were a novel.

Novels Within the Novel

In each of the novel’s three parts, the narrator refers to nameless novels: stories he’s read that influence his thinking. Each of these mini-stories is a way of discussing how we recognize and narrate our losses over long stretches of time.

Part I

In one novel: A young boy is hospitalized and gives his friend a notebook to “write the story of their friendship and time together.” He then dies, and the doctor tells the friend that this boy had always known he’d die young.