A mesmerizing Middle Eastern tale to be savored from beginning to end.
A timeless story of forbidden love set against a Saudi Arabian backdrop.
This intriguing work of historical fiction begins in the city of Jeddah in 1978. A single woman named Fawzia Bughaidan pursues a forbidden relationship with a young man named Hisham in secret. When her sister Ibtisam discovers this and confronts her, Fawzia must choose between her love for Hisham and her fear of repercussions. After tragedy strikes during a family trip to Mecca, she finds healing in a new friendship with an old woman named Salma al-Shamaali. Looking back to 1917, Salma tells Fawzia of the long, arduous, and adventurous journey of her own life. She was also tempted by forbidden love as a young woman, and when her father found out about it, she was forced to marry her abusive cousin. When his temper made her fear for her life, she and her servant girl sought refuge, traveling hundreds of miles across the deserts and mountains of Saudi Arabia dressed as men. Salma’s memorable journey and the lessons that she learned along the way give Fawzia the inspiration that she needs to move forward—and to finally decide what to do about Hisham. Campbell’s masterful debut novel delivers a story that matches up flawlessly with real-life aspects of Middle Eastern culture, geography, and history. The characters are deeply developed, and their stories intertwine with true events that readers may be unaware of, such as the 1918 flu epidemic and the 1979 Grand Mosque siege. The storytelling transports the audience to a foreign place and time with vivid details and timeless themes. As the well-paced plot moves forward, readers may nearly forget about its destination because they’re so wrapped up in the journey.
A mesmerizing Middle Eastern tale to be savored from beginning to end.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9990743-0-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Loon Cove Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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