An endearing, if patchy, love letter to Iran.
In this novel by Rashidi (Tales of Iran, 2013), a young man, recently released from an Iranian jail, falls in love with a woman who’s strictly off-limits.
Kazem is not a bad man; he simply enjoys living on the fringes of the law. Just out of prison, he returns to the streets of Tehran to seek out his scoundrel companions. He finds them decaying in a murky world of opium and arrack (an alcoholic drink). Out of the skid row squalor, however, emerges a vision of hope: the beautiful Maryam, daughter of a wealthy hajji. For Kazem, it’s love at first sight, and he sets about wooing her immediately. Maryam remains gentle yet aloof; she’s certain that her father will never consent to her marrying a penniless man with such a dubious background. Finally, she reveals to Kazem that the hajji has promised her hand in marriage to someone else, and that she’ll soon wed. However, this only serves to strengthen Kazem’s resolve, and he kidnaps Maryam. He then seeks refuge with her in the city’s backstreets, as her furious father seeks retribution. The novel opens in the summer of 1978, and its backdrop charts Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s rise to power. Along the way, Rashidi examines the growing unrest in Tehran and the emergence of its “thug” culture. Essentially, the novel asks difficult questions about what it means to be Iranian and a Muslim when faced with a brutal regime that tortures its own people. The author is at his best when describing Tehran’s crowds, which he does in great detail: “Hairy, grim-faced pahlavans showed off their physical prowess by tearing large copper trays in two….Multicolored chadored women shrieked at their grubby, shabbily-clothed children.” However, these descriptions are often prone to repetition, which can become tiresome. Rashidi also relies too heavily on clichés; at one point, for example, Kazem’s friend Mohsen runs “like a bat out of hell.” Nevertheless, this is a touching, engaging love story punctuated by pleasure and pain, which offers a privileged glimpse into Tehran life.
An endearing, if patchy, love letter to Iran.Pub Date: July 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0755216666
Page Count: 246
Publisher: New Generation Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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