There’s little joy to be found in this tale of a doomed family, flavored with myth and fairy tale, yet the poetic narration...
Reminiscing in her Los Angeles garden, an elderly woman pieces together the tragedy of her ancestors’ Iranian Jewish household, in which the actions of two brothers “who would sacrifice anything for one another” result in sorrow for three wives.
Foroutan’s lyrical debut offers a mosaic of stories evoking life within a wealthy Jewish home in Kermanshah, Iran, in earlier times. Although Asher Malacouti has spun the money inherited from his father into a fortune, his success has only made his desperation for a son and heir all the more urgent. This is a world of deeply traditional roles, where a wife’s security depends on her fertility, so as time passes and Asher’s young wife, Rakhel, fails to conceive, tensions rise. Rakhel is forced to accept Asher’s decision to take a second wife, Kokab, but it drives her into a terrible suicidal episode. Then Kokab—divorced by her first husband and forcibly separated from her daughter—fails to conceive, too. Through the ghostly voices of this unhappy home, with brothers Asher and Ibrahim at its center and the womenfolk circling them like satellites, the disastrous history is slowly reassembled. The repository of these stories is Mahboubeh Malacouti, Ibrahim’s daughter, who left Iran in 1977 but who has memories of Rakhel, a harsh, vindictive woman, although none at all of her own mother. All Mahboubeh knows is what Ibrahim told her, that her mother “died from the complications of womanhood.” Deftly structured, this novel traces those complications to their core, exposing the pain, oppressive forces, and difficult allegiances within and without the estate, while lending grace through the delicacy of its observation.
There’s little joy to be found in this tale of a doomed family, flavored with myth and fairy tale, yet the poetic narration overlays the suffering with surprising beauty.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-238838-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
This collection of short stories by the southerner whose first novel Wise Blood appeared in 1952 is more likely to attract readers who want to follow Miss O'Connor's writing progress rather than those who favor fiction in this form. Miss O'Connor is not really a short story writer. She seems to need more space to develop her characters and to point this up- her best story is the longest in the book, The Displaced Person. In this, a southern farm is seen as a community of uprooted people- all fighting for security in their own ways, and a kind of understanding and sympathy is developed for each with tragic success. The River, the ironic fragment- A Stroke of Good Fortune- and A Circle in the Fire (second prize in Doubleday's Prize Stories 1955 collection) are among the best here, while some- including the title story- are the skimpiest of sketches, and again still others do not have room enough to develop beyond what it seems was in the author's mind. Many of these have appeared in the Kenyor Review. Harper's Bazaar, and the New Yorker, and will cater to eclectic tastes.
Pub Date: June 3, 1995
ISBN: 0151365040
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1955
A compelling portrait of a woman facing the difficult limits of love.
The day after Nina Browning's son, Finch, is accepted to Princeton, he makes a terrible decision, and Nina's perfect life comes crashing down.
Raised in the small town of Bristol, on the border of Tennessee and Virginia, Nina married well. Her husband, Kirk, and she have raised Finch among Nashville’s privileged, well-manicured mansions, sending him to the prestigious Windsor Academy. Yet an alcohol-soaked party ends with Finch snapping compromising pictures of an unconscious young woman, Lyla Volpe, a sophomore on scholarship to Windsor. The photos spread like wildfire through the town, leaving Lyla devastated. Her father, Tom, a carpenter struggling to raise Lyla alone after her mother deserted them, is determined to exact justice from the school’s Honor Council. Nina is dismayed to find Finch and Kirk blithely unconcerned about Lyla's feelings or Finch’s crime. They are far more interested in using the Browning family wealth to convince the school and Tom to turn a blind eye—not to mention using Finch’s sexual magnetism to manipulate Lyla’s emotions. Distraught, Nina forges friendships with Tom and Lyla, which will expose the fault lines in her own family. Giffin (First Comes Love, 2016, etc.) shifts perspectives from chapter to chapter, giving voice to Lyla’s teenage fears of social repercussions and Tom’s efforts to balance his fierce protective streak with his desire to give his daughter her freedom. Yet it is Nina’s chapters that ring most powerfully, as Giffin captures the complexity of Nina’s emotions: Her maternal instincts to protect her son war against her feminist alliance with the wronged Lyla; her wistful memories of her beloved little boy wrestle with her outrage at his racist, sexist, and increasingly devious young adult behavior; and her carefully constructed sense of family fractures against her realization that Kirk may not be the husband, father, or man she thought he was.
A compelling portrait of a woman facing the difficult limits of love.Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-17892-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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