I was skeptical that I'd like the format but it's very engrossing storytelling. Important history and exploration of identity and story. ( )

WINNER OF THE 31st Lambda Literary Award—BEST BISEXUAL FICTION!

The Publisher Says: Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them.

In this high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story, key moments of Iranian history, politics, and culture punctuate stories of family drama and triumph. Yet it is Kimiâ herself––punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”—who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel.



I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF AMAZON'S PRIME READING PROGRAM. USE THIS BENEFITS! WE'RE HOW THEY LIVE, SO TAKE ALL ADVANTAGES.

My Review: From the off, this is a very musical, music-like story, told in the form of "Side A" and "Side B." This alerts us "...old enough to remember 45 rpm vinyl records know that the B-side is usually less interesting that the A-side. Side B is the failed side, the weak side", that we should expect the whole read to be inflected by this frame of reference. And lo and behold, it is!

Kimiâ, or "alchemy" as the word has come to us in English, is a magical confabulation of stories and ideas and history. She is in a fertility clinic when we meet her...she is making the future, deliberately and calculatedly, in other words...and she begins with many skips and backtrackings and forward-lurchings to relate to us the recent history of Iran. ("Recent" is relative, of course, since Iran's history dates back to the invention of the idea of civilization so dwarfs silly Western concepts like "history" and the yet-more-modern "prehistory.") Kimiâ's family, the whole huge swath of them...six uncles, a grandfather who had a wife for ever week of the year...are in their different ways shaping the world's as well as their own world's history.

Sara and Darius, her mom and dad, are revolutionaries against the Shah, though very much antithetical to the theocratic horrors of the Islamic state that replaced one cruel oppressor with another. Their exile to France doesn't dim their ardor for and connection to an Iran free and liberated from repression and tyranny. For Kimiâ that includes her sex's oppression and reduction to the role of housewives. She's a bisexual woman and very much anathema to the present regime. They don't acknowledge the existence of gay or bi identities in Iran.

It gives special poignance to the read to realize that Home, when it doesn't want you, isn't home anymore; and France, the land they're living in if not part of, is in the awful, wrenching process of a rightward shift that rejects foreigners like her. It's a miserable truth that Négar Djavadi, the author of the work, is living in that same France, writing in French, and unable to conceptualize a safe return to the land of her birth.

Sleep isn't about resting, it's about letting yourself settle, like the sediment at the bottom of a wine barrel. I'm nowhere near trusting this world that much.

It is, in the end, the birth, "that dark hyphen between the past and the future which, once crossed, closes again and condemns you to wander"...her own, your own, the one Kimiâ is going to endure soon enough...that provides Kimiâ's final reckoning with the subject of exile:

With the passage of time, the flesh of events decomposes, leaving only a skeleton of impressions on which to embroider. Undoubtedly there will come a day when even the impressions will only be a memory. And then there won’t be anything left to tell.

She is compelled "to let myself be guided by the flow of images and free associations, the natural fits and starts, the hollows and bumps carved into my memories by time." She is the witness, the one whose between-state of emigrant/immigrant is definitional; her responsibility equally to the parents and family whose worlds are so different from hers, and the life she's making whose existence will continue a line of existences that partake in many beautiful, braided strands of the bread we eat with our every act, that we call History. ( )

This was a multi-generational story set against the background of Kimia, the main character, trying to get pregnant through a clinic in France. The story jumps timelines throughout and reminded me of Garcia Marquez’s writing without the magical realism. Overall, this was an effective novel but I found myself needing to reread some sections (my own shortcoming). The character list in the back was useful in this regard. Nevertheless, the story of the Sadr family was arresting and I found its exploration of how we become who we are fascinating. I would recommend it highly. ( )

One of those books labeled as "novel" that seems mostly based on the facts of the writer's life -- autofiction. (Another one I recently finished: 'Homeland Elegies' by Ayad Akhtar -- also labeled a novel and also seemingly trickingly true.) Labeling any narrative as a novel, no matter how much is true, seems like a smart tactic for a writer to dodge some questions from a reader about what could be true or not and also possible accountability, legal or otherwise. (For example, 'Homeland Elegies' mentions Trump, so better to label the book a novel altogether.) This story is told while the main character is waiting in a fertility clinic, a very jumpy narrative about the main character's ancestors and family. But I almost wish there was more focus here -- so many scattered bits and pieces, about Iran, France, exile, so many interesting ancestors (and uncles!), the main character's love of music -- the topics are so wide that I would wish for more on each topic OR a narrower lens. But it's great to have another book that started in Iran. ( )

Well written and well translated. This story is a harsh look at another world from another time, back when the people of Iran had fulfilling lives before losing it all. Many of these people had to flee persecution due to their intellectual activism and economic status. It reminds me of the difficulties China faced in its past before overcoming. It is bittersweet to see how newer generations grow up within a society no longer connected to its past and to even forget its own heritage. ( )