THE PERSIANS

What if there was a completely different version of your family’s cherished story?

Mahloudji’s debut novel traces the fortunes of five women of the Valiat family, an Iranian clan proudly descended from Babak Ali Khan Valiat, “The Great Warrior.” The three generations include Elizabeth, the steely matriarch who remained in post-revolutionary Iran; her daughters, Shirin and Seema, who fled to the U.S. in 1979; and their respective daughters, Niaz, who (ostensibly) chose to remain in Iran, and Bita, a law student in New York. The complicated and often contentious relationships between and among the women are drawn in detail, with most of the narrative—except for Elizabeth’s story—delivered in each individual woman’s voice. A disturbance in the family’s delicate balance of power occurs when, in a madcap episode during a 2005 vacation in Aspen a year after Seema’s death from cancer, Shirin is charged with attempted prostitution. Shirin’s frantic efforts to maintain her social standing result in a temporary relocation to New York, where her niece, Bita, is questioning her own legacy and path in life. An unanticipated visit from the homeland by Elizabeth and Niaz prompts revelations about the family’s history and the ghostly spirit of Seema recounts her frustrations and apprehensions in her adopted homeland. Used to being perceived (in Iran and in their own minds) as high-rollers and worthy of respect, the Valiat women need to reconcile the realities of their current lives—American indifference to their ancestral importance, diminished circumstances in a radically changed Iran, illness and thwarted ambition, to name just a few—with their beliefs about the family’s history of status and privilege. By turns comic and affecting, the saga of the Valiat women conveys hard truths about women’s lives along with a healthy dose of couture and jewelry.

The glitz never outshines the heart here.