March was a great month for reading in that I ran from one book to another, but not so good for reviewing as my interest in writing fled in the opposite direction. Which now means I have a head full of tangled plots, character confusion, and dense clusters of missing information about what I’ve read. There will have to be some rereading in my future, combined with cursing ... Read More...
The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan
From the nucleus of one family, The Arsonists’ City is a novel that spins out between decades and countries. Idris and Mazna met in the 1970s. He lived in Beirut and was studying to be a doctor and she was a young actress living with her family in Damascus. Decades later they are settled in America with three grown children. The death of Idris’s father means he’s inherited the ... Read More...
Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi
When Sitara is 10 years old her life is flipped upside down. She goes from being the beloved only daughter of a high-ranking Afghan advisor to the country’s president to an orphan on the run. It’s 1982 and Communist backed forces stage a military coup in Nadia Hashimi’s new novel, Sparks Like Stars. Sitara’s family is killed in front of her, but she manages to hide from the ... Read More...
The Bad Muslim Discount
The blurb for The Bad Muslim Discount calls it “hilarious” so I was ready for some kind of satirical, light, comedic look at Muslim culture in America told from the Middle Eastern perspective. I was deliciously mistaken in that what I got was a thoughtful, nuanced portrayal of two immigrants, one from Pakistan and one from Iraq whose lives unexpectedly intersect. Was it the ... Read More...
No Heaven for Good Boys
In Senegal, young boys are often sent from their rural villages to Dakar, a city where they have opportunities for religious and secular education not found at home. Most often it begins when the child is ten, but in the case of seven-year-old Ibrahimah when Marabout Ahmed saves his life, his father, Idrissa, agrees to let the holy man take his son and begin his education ... Read More...
What Could Be Saved
The word “normal” ceases to exist in families who lose a child. Either they re-form together into a new unit or they separate. After 8-year-old Philip disappears in What Could Be Saved, the Preston family is the latter. They shatter, with the four remaining members—father, Robert; mother, Genevieve; daughters, Beatrice, and Laura, leaving Thailand to return home to the U.S. ... Read More...
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