Sparkling dialogue and warm characters make Kamali’s debut novel perfect for book clubs.
Career, love, happiness—for Mina Rezayi, everything becomes a gently humorous negotiation between her Iranian heritage and her American hopes, between her mother and herself.
Mina, who would rather be an artist than finish her MBA, flinches at the thought of another Sunday tea with a Mr. Possible. But she cannot disappoint her mother, Darya, a gifted mathematician, who, in pre-revolutionary Iran, had dreamed of becoming a professor. An arranged marriage to Parviz, whom she eventually came to love deeply, and three children, however, dashed those plans. After escaping the oppressive Islamic regime and making a home in America, Parviz works hard, earns an American medical license and brims with irrepressible optimism. He channels his enthusiastic you-can-do-it attitude into convincing Darya to start a Saturday afternoon math camp. With only two other members—Yung-Ja and Kavita—the club is the highlight of her week, and the women engage in complex mathematical acrobatics as well as competing over whose homeland has suffered the worst upheavals. Sighing with exasperation, Darya even allows Parviz to register her for a night class on spreadsheets, where she meets Sam, who’s just a friend, right? Constructing complex graphs, charts and spreadsheets, Darya evaluates potential husbands for Mina. So far, her matchmaking efforts have been thorough yet unsuccessful. But one Sunday, Mr. Dashti comes to tea. And Mr. Dashti looks strangely relieved when Mina rejects him. His unexpected reaction intrigues Mina, and she begins to dream about returning to Iran. Maybe there she could resolve her own identity crisis. To her surprise, Darya decides to accompany her. Deftly threaded memories of Iran and of the revolution’s effects on their family enrich the story as Mina and Darya gain sympathy for each other’s struggles.
Sparkling dialogue and warm characters make Kamali’s debut novel perfect for book clubs.Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-223680-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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