Review of WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? by Shari Lapena (New Release)

3.5 Stars 

The last Shari Lapena novel I read was Everyone Here is Lying (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2023/07/review-of-everyone-here-is-lying-by.html). What Have You Done? has many similarities with this previous offering.

The naked body of 17-year-old Diana Brewer is found in a farmer’s field. Very quickly, Fairhill, Vermont, where nothing ever happens, becomes a town full of suspects. Who killed the well-liked teenager? Was it Cameron Farrell, her controlling boyfriend? Was it Brad Turner, Diana’s track coach who has been accused of inappropriate behaviour towards female students? Was it Joe Prior, the creepy guy who harassed Diana at her job? But then it seems these three are not the only ones who have secrets and are not totally forthcoming during the investigation into Diana’s murder.

The novel has multiple perspectives. Among them are a number of people connected to Diana: her mother, her friends (Riley and Evan), her boyfriend, and her educators (principal, English teacher, track coach). Then there are others more tangentially connected: Mr. Turner’s fiancée and various parents. Diana also narrates brief sections in the first person. This narrative approach creates a long list of potential suspects as the reader becomes aware of people’s actions and motivations which cause them to lie. Unfortunately, the distinctiveness of one perspective makes it easy to identify the killer.

Diana’s return as a ghost to provide her point of view is, I think, unnecessary. She doesn’t remember who killed her, presumably having blocked it from her memory because of the trauma, so she has nothing to add that will provide clues to her murderer’s identity. Most of her comments are about the grieving of her mother and her friends. What she mentions the reader already knows from others, so this supernatural element seems purposeless.

Of course it is not just Diana’s life that is destroyed. As secrets are uncovered, it’s obvious that the lives of many are turned upside down and will never be the same. The fallout may include marriages and careers being damaged beyond repair. Parents question how well they know their children. And people become suspicious of others, even loved ones.

Diana makes a comment at one point: “How many ways, I think, can a girl be assaulted?” This statement summarizes the theme of violence against women that permeates the book. Diana is harmed by other people besides her killer. She and other girls are subjected to unwanted sexual attention and suffer at the hands of men wanting to control their lives. And those who should protect them are dismissive and negligent.

This is an enjoyable book, and its short chapters make it a quick and easy read as well. Though it is not exceptional, I would classify it as a decent thriller perfect for a summer read.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE AFRICAN SAMURAI by Craig Shreve

 3.5 Stars

This novel is set in the late sixteenth century in Japan and is the fictionalized story of the first foreign-born Samurai, a black man from Africa.

The plot follows the story of a young boy, eventually given the name of Yasuke, who is kidnapped by the Portuguese from an unspecified African tribe. He is taken to India where he is trained to be a slave-soldier but then later finds himself amongst the Jesuits where he comes to the attention of Alessandro Valignano who educates him. Eventually he becomes the bodyguard for Valignano, the highest-ranking Jesuit in Asia, until he gifts him to Oda Nobunaga, a Japanese feudal warlord, in exchange for permission to erect a church. Nobunaga comes to trust and respect Yasuke and eventually he gives him the title of samurai.

The novel is narrated in first-person by Yasuke, though he tells his story in a non-linear fashion. The story alternates between his experiences in Japan and flashbacks to his childhood in Africa, his time enslaved and forced to fight in India, and his years spent in Europe with the Jesuits.

This is not my usual genre so it’s probably not a book I would have chosen to read were it not the 2024 SD&G Reads choice. It is a male-dominated book with few women. Yasuke thinks often of his mother but she features only in the flashbacks. Tomiko, one of Nobunaga’s servants, appears a few times but she is certainly not a central character and seems to have been added as a token female. I would have liked to learn more about Nobunaga’s home life. A quick Wikipedia search reveals that he had a wife, numerous concubines, and several children.

I understand that the author’s purpose was to tell Yasuke’s story, but I felt I got little sense of his daily life outside of training and fighting. I also get the impression that the author didn’t want to deviate from or take too many liberties with the limited historical information available about the protagonist. There is a non-fiction book about Yasuke which the author mentions in his bibliography. Why write fiction if not to imagine and dramatize that which is missing in biographical information? I guess I was looking for a richer, more in-depth imagining of Yasuke’s life.

It’s my failing, but I have to admit having difficulty with the Japanese names like Toyotomi, Tokugawa, and Takeda as well as Akechi and Azuchi. There are overly long passages describing the hierarchy of Japanese nobles, political rivalries and machinations, and military strategy; these bored me and some of them proved to be unnecessary to an understanding of events.

The book is very much an exploration of enslavement. At the age of twelve, Yasuke loses his identity, family, and freedom. He has no free agency; decisions are made for him by others. His value is only in his service: “It was the lesson I had learned many times over . . . That no matter how many years I had served . . . no matter how faithfully and how well, and regardless of the good treatment and fine clothes and training and occasional freedoms, in the end I was still a thing to be traded. I was still property.”

Yasuke learns to survive. He learns that “Adapting to new circumstances meant releasing any attachments to the old” and “Making myself valuable was one element of my survival. The other was learning everything I could of my new environment.” He proves to be intelligent and diligent, always observant and alert to dangers. Given what he endures, it is impossible not to find him a sympathetic character. It is heartwarming to see him finally be given freedom and the home he has long sought, though he questions the price he has paid: “was it worth it? Taken from my village, forced into war, . . . were the horrors suffered along the way justified by the honor waiting at the end? I could not bring myself to say yes. Too many had died, some at my own hand. . . . All justified by my own survival. . . The price was too high. But the price had already been paid, regardless.”

There are a couple of passages that I really liked. One is Yasuke’s reflection that humans are the same regardless of where they live: “So many reminders of home, in this place so far away from what should have been my home. The traditions of painted faces and carved masks, and song and dance. The beliefs that we can be guided by the spirits of our ancestors. Even the legends, of holy mountains and gods that fought over the land. All these things made me wonder if maybe men everywhere were the same.”

I also liked Tomiko’s rebuttal to Yasuke’s comment that he finds Japanese culture strange: “’No . . . you are just seeing it with strange eyes.’” He reflects “I suddenly understood how the foreign slavers and priests could look at my people as savages, not understanding our ways, evaluating our customs and practices against their standards, their experience.”

What the book also emphasized for me is the evils brought by Christianization. Yasuke mentions to Nobunaga that “’Many of [the Jesuits] are harmless priests and true believers. But some of them are far from that. Some are soldiers, criminals, killers, who were offered a choice between execution and salvation. There are dangerous men amongst them.’” Valignano chastises a priest for not baptizing Yasuke, stating, “’Why do we send our missionaries out to the farthest reaches of the world if we don’t believe the people we find there to be God’s children?’” However, he has little respect for the culture and beliefs of others and will do whatever he thinks is necessary to build his churches. He treats Yasuke like property in the belief that “’How can something that is necessary be evil?’”

This is an interesting novel about a largely unknown historical figure, though I would have preferred a more detailed depiction of all aspects of a samurai’s life. Readers should be forewarned that there is a lot of graphic violence: men are brutally tortured and killed and several commit seppuku, ritual suicide.

Review of BECOMING MARLOW FIN by Ellen Won Steil (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This book is a mystery, family drama, romance, and psychological thriller.

In 1995, a six-year-old Black girl is found abandoned in the woods and is adopted by the Baek family that finds her. Stella and Patrick bring her into their family which also includes their eight-year-old daughter Isla and Patrick’s Korean mother known by all as Moni. That abandoned girl, Marlow Fin, becomes a supermodel. In 2021, she grants a tell-all interview in which she discusses her life and her role in some tragic events within her family. The nature of these tragedies and a number of family secrets are slowly revealed.

The book has multiple points of view. Isla’s sections, narrated in first person, focus on the past: how life within the family changed with Marlow’s arrival. Marlow’s section, in the present, is in question-and-answer interview form. There are also some third-person chapters from the perspective of a young woman named Wren; she describes events in her life in the 1980s.

There is considerable suspense. It becomes clear that there is an undercurrent of anger and tension within the family. Stella is reticent to accept Marlow and the husband and wife argue regularly, though Moni tries to protect the girls from witnessing these angry exchanges. Then as the girls grow up, jealousy arises between them. Marlow’s beauty tends to upstage Isla, though Marlow seems envious of her sister. And there is definitely a dark side to Marlow: “She was beyond the realm of control.”

The only truly likeable main character is Moni who loves everyone in the family. She is kind and welcoming to everyone. When the girls become friends with Sawyer who moves in next door with his grandmother, Moni welcomes them into the neighbourhood and ends up feeding Sawyer almost daily. Other characters prove to have less than admirable qualities and all have secrets.

There is a vagueness about some events that is problematic. Exactly how certain events happened is never explained. The ending also does not answer all the reader’s questions. This nebulous quality affects the novel’s credibility. I want details so I can believe that what supposedly happened could realistically have occurred. The somewhat open-ended closing may bother some readers.

The plot is carefully constructed to maximize twists. There are layers of family secrets, some of which I guessed though others are worse than I expected. These revelations leave the reader to re-evaluate impressions of characters so a re-reading might be interesting.

This book is recommended to those who enjoy trying to find the truth amongst secrets, lies, and rumours.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of ONE GRAND SUMMER by Ewald Arenz (New Release)

4 Stars

Ewald Arenz’s novel Tasting Sunlight wowed me in 2022 (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2022/06/review-of-tasting-sunlight-by-ewald.html); two years later I’m being wowed once again, this time by his second novel, One Grand Summer.

Sixteen-year-old Friedrich Büchner fails Latin and Math so, instead of going on holiday with his family, he is left in care of his grandparents so he can study and resit the exams. Frieder loves Nana but fears his strict and formal step-grandfather. His mornings are devoted to studying, but he has free time to spend with his sister Alma and his best friend Johann. And then he meets Beate, a girl who captures his heart. By the end of the summer of 1981, he will have experienced love, adventure, and tragedy; that summer changes him and shapes the rest of his life.

This is a coming-of-age novel. Frieder experiences first love, learns how to be a true friend, and comes to more fully appreciate his family. He learns to accept responsibility for his actions and to ask for help when he needs it; Nana points out, “’the ability to see when you need help and then to ask for it, is something very grown-up indeed.’” It is Frieder’s learning about love that stands out for me. He comes to understand that love can be painful and incomprehensible and powerful. Not only does he learn about love first-hand because of his romance with Beate, but he also learns about love from his grandparents. Nana, artistic and free-spirited, and Grandfather, “a hard man,” are so different, but they love each other. And he realizes that “’Love isn’t dependent on whether or not one of you does something stupid.’”

The author excels at capturing adolescent life. He portrays so authentically both the light-hearted, carefree moments of youth but also the unsettling ones. We see the quartet of teens spending time together, setting out on adventures, engaging in rebellious behaviour, falling in love, dealing with conflict, questioning loyalties, making stupid choices, and messing up. We also see them maturing as they learn from mistakes. The depiction of adolescence is so accurate it will leave adult readers reminiscing about their own.

The author is also a master of evocative language, using words and phrases that evoke sensory experiences and imagery in the minds of readers. His are not mere descriptions since he immerses readers in a vivid tapestry of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures. The magical elements of summer are made real, whether the scent of robinia flowers and freshly cut grass, the songs of birds, the sight of silver poplars, the taste of chips with ketchup, or the feel of the midday heat or a wet swimsuit.

The plot is simple but engaging. This book will appeal to young adults for whom the sensitive portrayal of adolescence will resonate and adults will be left nostalgic for the summers of their youth. It’s perfect that the English translation is being released in the summer. I can think of no better book to take with you to a favourite summer spot.

Review of THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY by Louise Penny

 2.5 Stars

This is the eighth book in the Inspector Gamache series. In my review of the previous book, I mentioned that the murder cases in these books have become a secondary interest. I find myself more intrigued with what is happening with the residents of Three Pines. Then this book appears and it has no connection whatsoever to these villagers.

This novel is a locked-room mystery of sorts. It is set in the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups in the wilderness of Quebec. The monastery is home to cloistered monks who have taken a vow of silence, though they have become world-famous for their Gregorian chants. The renowned choir director, Frère Mathieu, is found murdered so the monastery doors have to be opened to admit Gamache and Beauvoir so they can find the killer and restore peace and harmony.

The murder mystery is lacklustre. The motivation is unconvincing and once the murder weapon is identified, the identity of the killer is obvious. Given the makeup of the monastic community, it is also not difficult to pick out the monk who stands out from the rest.

The twist in the plot is the sudden arrival of Francoeur. Gamache’s arch-nemesis. Francoeur comes across as a cartoon villain. He has so much to lose but he makes a dramatic entrance at a secluded monastery to set in motion his revenge plot?! He’s the Chief Superintendent of Quebec’s police force, but he has unlimited time to waste? Gamache’s problems with his superiors are becoming tiresome. Surely it’s time for him to take some decisive action.

Beauvoir’s struggles with addiction to pain killers are unconvincing. He has been off drugs for three months and is finally in a relationship with his beloved Annie, but he suffers such a sudden, precipitous decline? His reactions, almost murderous, to Gamache are over-the-top. That melodramatic ending is off-putting.

Penny always includes cultural information, this time about Gregorian chants. Some of this is often interesting. This time, however, I was disappointed. Are we to believe that the erudite Gamache doesn’t know that St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music? Surely he would have encountered John Dryden’s poem “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” in his education at an elite British university. And then there’s the incorrect interpretation of Pontius Pilate’s “Ecce homo” (“Behold the Man’”) which Penny uses as a central motif. Penny would have been better served to reference “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar with its repetition of “He's a man, he's just a man.”

I’m listening to these books because they are easy to follow. But no one bothered to correct the reader’s pronunciation of Francoeur? He’s never heard the French word coeur? Francoeur is not Fransieur!

Though I’ve not been overly impressed with any of the books, this one is probably my least favourite.

Review of THE HEART IN WINTER by Kevin Barry (New Release)

 4 Stars

I encountered this author via an earlier novel, Night Boat to Tangier (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2019/12/review-of-night-boat-to-tangier-by.html), which I enjoyed, so I thought I’d read his latest release.

This book begins in October of 1891 in Butte, Montana. Tom Rourke, addicted to a life of alcohol, opium, and debauchery, meets Polly Gillespie who has just arrived and been married to a mine captain. It’s love at first sight for Tom, and Polly quickly succumbs to his roguish charm. Soon the two head west with stolen money and a stolen horse, their escape resulting in a pursuit by hired hit men.

This is, at least in part, a love story. It’s a forbidden love but one Tom and Polly believe is their fate, giving them no choice but to fall in love. Priding himself on being something of a clairvoyant, Tom “senses the approach of a dangerous fate” just before he first meets Polly. I found myself hoping that theirs was not a star-crossed love and that they would be given a chance to be together because, though surrounded by danger and violence, there is no doubt of the tenderness and passion that exists between them. When a situation arises that puts Polly in danger, Tom risks his life, feeling “He had never had a task so sharply defined in his life before, never this weight of purpose, not this fury of intent.”

The book excels at depicting the lives of immigrants working in the silver and copper mines: “they worked until death the pits.” They came to the Promised Land but “Those who had been dispossessed would forever remain so – this was the golden promise of the Republic.” One immigrant says, “In a country like this . . . all they give you is fairy tales. . . . They’ll tell you that you can be happy. That it’s your right and destiny. . . . Now that’s a bunch of horseshit.”

One of the book’s messages is that survival may mean forgetting the past. We learn little about Tom and Polly’s lives before their arrival in Butte. Even with each other they are circumspect: Tom “said little of the time before he came to Butte or where he had come from” and “She was blurry about the details of things” and both sense they should not press for more information. Looking back may result in being “eaten whole and alive by the past” so it’s best to avoid falling “into the drag of the past like the drag of a river because it is so powerful it can take you down.” And of course one’s memories cannot always be trusted: “the past it shifts around all the time. The past is not fixed and it is not certain . . . The past it changes all the while every minute you’re still breathing and how in fuck are you supposed to make sense of it all.”

Westerns are not my genres of choice, but this one is worth reading for the language alone. There is an energy to Barry’s unrestrained language that jumps off the page. Here’s a description of the effects of drinking tequila: “They were neither of them used to Mexican drinking but intrigued by it all the same – its sweet congress and carnival air – despite the trepanation-like skull pain the colourless spirit had the pronounced tendency to leave in it wake.” A winter morning comes up “corpse-grey and ominous. Winter by now was truly the sour landlord of the forest.” The vivid imagery continues: “the stumps of ancient trees showed like broken teeth” and “a dank hallow that felt like an alcove for the laying out of the dead” and “the funereal odour of juniper as in a church incense.” There are also run-on sentences that lack commas and some stream-of-consciousness passages: “in a shotgun shack somewhere in the Idaho Territory getting fed up like a vealcalf by a toothlackin Cornish gunsman of extreme mental dubiety and the wind is pickin up outside and offerin its slow yearnsome tales – go sell ‘em somewhere else, fucker, I’m stocked – and you’re waitin on your sworn lover.” There’s more than tongue-in-cheek humour in the reference to “writing men with a penchant for the high style.”

There is a lot of humour. We’re introduced to Tom as he is engaged in writing matrimonial proposals for “wretched cases . . . The halt and the lame, the mute and the hare-lipped, the wall-eyed men who heard voices in the night – they could all be brought up nicely enough against the white field of a page. Discretion, imagination and the careful edit were all that was required.” Then there are the various characters that Tom and Polly encounter during their travels, among the first being two Métis men enjoying hallucinogenic mushrooms and a man of the cloth imbibing large amounts of tequila.

The book reminded me of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, but I enjoyed this one much more. Its memorable characters, humour, vivid imagery, and poetic language make for an engrossing, entertaining read. There’s reference to a newspaper article entitled, “The Twelve Rules of Writing Western Adventures” which Tom studies “in grave and scholastic silence” before commenting sourly “There’s fucken twelve of ‘em?” If such rules exist, Kevin Barry has mastered them all.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE DANCER by Óskar Guðmundsson

 3.5 Stars

I’m always on the lookout for Icelandic crime fiction and was happy to discover this author whom I had not read.

Set in 1982 in Reykjavík, the book opens with a dance scene unlike any I’ve ever seen or read about. It certainly sets the tone for the rest of the novel. Gunnhildur was once a promising ballet dancer but an accident left her wheel-chair bound and an alcoholic. From when he was a child, she taught her son Tony to dance and subjected him to years of grueling practice sessions which have left him with damaged feet. By chance, he gets a role on the stage of the National Theatre. After being bullied and ostracized at school, he thinks he might have found friends among his fellow dancers, but he encounters a competitive world whose secrets further damage an already troubled and broken young man.

The book also opens with the discovery of the body of a man who turns out to be Tony’s father. Valdimar, a veteran detective, and Ylfa, a rookie, are paired to investigate. Of course, they are led to Gunnhildur and Tony’s home where they find a woman barely coherent and a young man who has no grief for the passing of his estranged father.

The novel alternates between Tony’s perspective and that of the two investigators. The police procedural elements are secondary because the focus is on Tony’s troubled mind. The book is really a “whydunit” rather than a “whodunit” because the killer’s identity is obvious. It is the exploration of motive that dominates the narrative. Nonetheless, there is a surprise or two.

What is also surprising is that despite the increasingly depraved actions of the killer, it is impossible not to have some sympathy for him. As the depths of his suffering are revealed, it is impossible not to see him as a victim caught in a web of the betrayal and thwarted ambitions of others. He is not an innocent but his desire for revenge is understandable. As one betrayal is piled on another, his descent into madness feels inevitable.

Valdimar and Ylfa make an interesting pair. Brief backstories are given for both: Valdimar has health concerns and Ylfa has marital problems. The two work well together and I hope that this is the first of a series featuring the duo.

My one issue with the book is Tony’s being able to get a part in a ballet already in rehearsals for an upcoming performance. I know that Iceland does not have a large population, but is it really possible for someone to walk in off the street and be given a role in a ballet at the Ƥjóðleikhúsið?

This dark and disturbing book is not for those looking for a cozy mystery. There is brutality and violence. It will appeal to those who are interested in an exploration of the psychological impact of childhood trauma and long-term abuse.

Review of KALA by Colin Walsh

 3.5 Stars

Because my husband and I are planning a trip to Ireland this fall, I’ve been making certain to read some contemporary Irish novels.

This one is set in 2018 in the seaside village of Kinlough on the west coast of the country, but there are repeated flashbacks to fifteen years earlier. In 2003, fifteen-year-old Kala Lanann disappeared; fifteen years later, her remains are found just as three of her close-knit group of friends are reunited. Helen, an investigative reporter living in Canada, has returned for her father’s wedding. Joe, an L.A.-based rock star, is back in his hometown to perform a series of gigs as he relaunches a local music venue. Mush is the one who never left; working in his mother’s coffee shop, he prefers to remain in the background because he’s self-conscious of his facial scars.

The narrative jumps back and forth between the present and the events of 2003 as the characters reminisce about that fateful summer, at the end of which their friend Kala disappeared. Chapters are presented in alternating points of view: Helen and Mush narrate in first person whereas Joe speaks in the second person. This latter approach is disconcerting at first, but it is so appropriate to Joe’s narcissistic personality. The second person narration suggests he’s observing himself from a distance and curating his image for social media where he has a major presence because of his fame.

Pacing is an issue. The book begins very slowly; more than once I considered abandoning the book. Only when two teenagers go missing in the second half does the momentum build. Then suspense ramps up because it seems that though Kinlough may be a pretty seaside village, there’s a violent underbelly, and Kala’s death may be connected to a network of violent men. There are fairly lengthy scenes of violence against both animals and humans. And then there’s an abrupt ending that is not altogether conclusive.

I was certainly interested in learning what happened to Kala, though I guessed the identity of the bad guy fairly early on. Once the obvious suspects are eliminated, it’s not difficult to narrow down the suspects. It was not, however, the thriller aspect of the book that impressed me but its portrayal of teenage life. We learn about their concerns; we follow the development of a romance, and we witness the partying. We see adolescent cruelty, insecurity, self-centredness, recklessness, and vulnerability. Though they can be loyal, the friends also betray each other in different ways.

The lives of Helen, Joe, and Mush are haunted by what happened in 2003. Helen speaks of Kala as “A hidden sun casting new shadows at unpredictable moments” and their being “frozen in some sort of crooked fidelity to adolescence.” Mush talks about how Kala has become “some kind of icon . . . more than a person like.” As the three re-visit the events surrounding Kala’s disappearance, they come to see Kala as a person and must face their roles in what transpired. And they do acquire some self-knowledge.

Though uneven in quality, this debut novel suggests that Colin Walsh, named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year, is an author to follow.

Review of THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN by Marjan Kamali (New Release)

3.5 Stars

This is a story about female friendship told against the backdrop of political upheaval in Iran.

In 1950, Elaheh (Ellie) Soltani is seven years old when her father dies. She and her mother are left in reduced circumstances and have to leave their large comfortable home to a tiny home in a poor neighbourhood. On her first day of school, Ellie meets Homa Roozbeh, and the two become best friends despite class differences and different personalities. Though they have different ambitions for their futures, both want to grow up to be lion women who are bold and courageous: “Strong women who make things happen.”

After three years, Ellie and her mother are able to return to their former lifestyle and the two girls are separated until a few years later when Homa reappears in Ellie’s privileged world. The two re-connect and pursue post-secondary educations, but political turmoil and an unintentional betrayal have devastating consequences.

Most of the novel is from Ellie’s perspective; only in the second half is the reader given brief sections from Homa’s first-person point of view. Homa is a lion woman from the beginning; Ellie becomes stronger only later in life, and even then she has to be pushed by others to take positive action. Whereas Homa is always admirable, I found Ellie difficult to like. Though intelligent, she is naive and shallow. Self-centred, she tends to be jealous of others. Her focus is finding a husband and having a family. Homa, on the other hand, is kind, spirited, strong-willed, and resilient. She becomes a political activist committed to women’s rights and is willing to risk her personal safety in order to achieve her mission. When we learn about Homa’s reason for keeping her distance from Ellie, one’s admiration cannot but increase.

The theme is friendship: how true, deep friendships can shape our lives. In the book, the actions and choices of one affect the life of the other. The book opens with a quote which clearly indicates the theme: “Events that seem to appear in the present from out of nowhere in actuality have a long history behind them.” The two girls from different social classes and with their different temperaments create a bond that is unbreakable despite separation, trauma, and revolution.

I also enjoyed the novel’s examination of the mother-daughter relationship. Ellie and her mother have a difficult relationship. Ellie describes her mother as “social-climbing, borderline narcissistic, always seemingly selfish” and “striving, shallow, and infuriating.” As a young girl, she wishes she had a mother more like Homa’s. Ellie too has some of these negative traits, and there is no doubt that her choices are strongly influenced by her mother. Only later does Ellie learn about her mother’s secrets, and she comes to terms with her mother’s failings because there is no doubt that she always loved her daughter.

The book provides interesting insights into Iranian culture. There is, for example, a detailed description of a wedding ceremony, and several instances of Iranian etiquette known as tarof: “the classic thanking and praising of the other and self-deprecation of the self.” Ellie learns to cook from Homa’s mother so there are numerous references to traditional dishes.

Since Homa is so passionate about women’s rights, there is a lot of information about the challenges faced by women in Iran. What is especially interesting is that we see women’s lives under both the Shah and the Ayatollah. Divorce and custody laws were improved and women were granted suffrage during the Shah’s rule; after the Islamic revolution, women’s rights were restricted. Several laws were enacted regarding mandatory veiling and a public dress code for women, and restrictions were removed on men's rights to child marriage. The book ends with reference to Mahsa Amini and the protests after her death.

Though I found the book rather slow at times, it has much to offer readers.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.