A moving portrait of Palestinian families caught between the pressures of the Old World and the New.
Their homeland casts a heavy shadow in this poignant novel about Baltimore’s Palestinian immigrant community.
Taken from a famous saying by legendary commander Tariq ibn Zayid (“Behind you is the sea. Before you, the enemy”), the title of Darraj’s novel aptly describes the situation facing her ensemble cast, which finds itself trapped between Old World expectations and the challenges of life in America. Like Zayid’s soldiers, they have no choice but to fight to understand their places in the world. Young people are frequently the heroes here—in “A Child of Air,” pregnant teen Reema Baladi braves shame to keep her baby, and in “Gyroscopes,” brilliant science student Layla Marwan challenges her high school’s choice of the stereotype-ridden Aladdin for its big drama production—while Darraj’s older characters struggle under the weight of their disillusionment. In “Mr. Ammar Gets Drunk at the Wedding,” strip mall owner Walid Ammar can’t hide his frustration as his cherished son marries a blue-eyed non-Arab woman who has “transformed Raed, his football-playing, lawyer son…from a pathfinder into a mule that lowers itself to the ground for its back to be loaded.” That wedding scene is masterfully choreographed in a book in which each chapter reads like a small masterpiece. In fact, as characters disappear and later reappear, the book reads less like a novel than like an interconnected series of stories reminiscent of Darraj’s A Curious Land (2016). For example, readers meet Marcus Salameh, a 30-something police detective who endures the daily traumas of his job, the impatience of his girlfriend, and the iciness of a father whose bitter disappointment with life has frozen his relationship with Marcus and his sister. The novel culminates in the brilliant “Escorting the Body,” in which Marcus honors his father’s dying wish to be buried in Palestine. Darraj deftly captures the entire experience, from Marcus’ jarring arrival in Palestine to the homespun humor of village life. When Marcus discovers a secret—that his father was actually capable of showing affection, just not to his children—he makes a startling offer that changes someone’s life and his, too.
A moving portrait of Palestinian families caught between the pressures of the Old World and the New.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063324237
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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