Wow!! I am just blown away by the fact that this is a first novel, the story and theme are so universal. A Muslim Indian family in America, trying to maintain its own beliefs and culture, while facing modernity. This family, mother, father, two daughters, Hadia and Huda,
…more and the youngest, a son Amar who never really feels he belongs. We come to know this family inside and out, the book starts with the marriage of Hadia and then goes back and forth, to various beginnings and endings. While their beliefs may not be mine, many of the problems between parents and siblings are indeed universal.
As they struggle to find their place in the larger world, the children also struggle to find their place in the family. Living up to parental expectations, or in Amar's case the struggle to find his place anywhere at all. Trying to carve a path between cultural and religious beliefs and the lessening of this expectation to fit with the place they now find themselves. The story of this family in all its totality is both moving and insightful. The barriers to acceptance by children and parents after 9/11, when all Muslims were viewed with suspicion and in many cases outright hate. By showing us the commonalities in their family and our own, this young author has shown us that we may in fact may not be so different.
The last part of the book focuses on the father's point of view alone. How he thought, what went wrong and what he wished he had done differently. It is full of anguish and remorse, and we clearly see for the first time what this Muslim, husband, father has gone through, from his own childhood to the way he tried to instill family values and religious beliefs in his children. It does end on a note of positivity, sadness yes, but hopefully as well. This is an outstanding piece of fiction, in my opinion, I quite frankly fell hard for this family, with all its flaws and things mistakenly done out of love. I wasn't ready to leave them at books end, and I believe if you read, or at least I hope, that you will see some of the same values, if not the religious beliefs, that we try to instill in our own families.
This is also the first book published under the Sarah Jessica Parker imprint of Random House, and it is a wonderful beginning. ARC from BookBrowse and Random House. (less)
