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Book Reviewed by:From the nationally bestselling author of the "powerful, heartbreaking" (Shelf Awareness) The Stationery Shop, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.
In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother's endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.
Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa's warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming "lion women."
But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls' high school in Iran, Ellie's memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie's privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.
Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.
Author Marjan Kamali distills Iran's complex contemporary history into a compelling narrative that centers on the intertwined lives of the two main characters. In emphasizing the contrast in the girls' upbringings, Kamali presents the reader with a multifaceted picture of Iran, and as personal and political conflicts build, she underscores how the differences between Ellie and Homa are not nearly as significant as their similarities as women living and surviving in a systemically misogynistic society...continued
Full Review
(529 words)
(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
In the southwest of Iran lies a city called Abadan, over five hundred miles from the country's capital of Tehran, with a population of a little over 200,000. Despite its relatively quiet presence, it played a crucial role in sparking the Iranian Revolution of 1979. On August 19, 1978, Cinema Rex, a movie theater located in a working-class district of the city, was burned down with the doors locked from the outside during a screening of The Deer (Gavaznha), resulting in the deaths of around 400 civilians. To understand the context of this terrorist attack and those responsible, we have to look at the preceding years in the Iranian government, and the social unrest that resulted from them.
In 1953, the democratically elected Prime ...
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An extraordinary, cinematic saga of rags-to-riches-to-revolution--called a "Doctor Zhivago of Iran" by Margaret Atwood--that follows an orphan girl coming of age at a time of dramatic upheaval.
by Marjan Kamali
Published 2020
A powerful love story exploring loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.
Adrienne Brodeur, New York Times bestselling author of Little Monsters
Kamali tells a moving story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and how a country's transformation, in turn, transforms the lives of two unforgettable women. Simultaneously heartbreaking and life affirming, it's a book that you won't be able to put down until you've read every word.
