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Loading... Bright Lines: A Novel (edition 2015)by Tanwi Nandini Islam (Author)
Work InformationBright Lines: A Novel by Tanwi Nandini Islam
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Beautiful! ( ) I wanted to like this book, I really did, but I couldn't quite get into it. The beginning was amazing - the author manages to present Brooklyn as a nearly magical place and the characters are intriguing, with hints of complexities that will unravel in the pages to come. Still, I kept loosing the thread of the story as it felt like the characters were completing to have their stories told and things felt more like a messy jumble than a thoughtful plot. Overall, it was an interesting story and I can understand why a different reader than myself might very well love this book. This is a really engrossing immigrant family drama, parts of which feel very familiar, not that different from the experiences of my mother's family. Immigrant parents, American children, family left behind in the old country, old family issues that didn't disappear because they moved away. The difference, of course, is that this family are Muslims from Bangladesh. Anwar and Hashi Saleem have built a good life in Brooklyn, where they have raised their daughter Charu and their orphaned niece Ella--daughter of Hashi's brother and his wife, murdered by old enemies from the war years. Ella is in college now; Charu has just graduated high school and will start college in the fall. Anwar runs Anwar's Apothecary, selling herbal health and beauty products which he makes himself. Hashi operates a beauty salon out of a portion of their house. All four have a summer of discovery and upheaval ahead of them. Ella comes home from college to find Charu's friend Maya, daughter of a local Muslim cleric, asleep in her bed. Maya has run away from a home life that is increasingly not just strict, but oppressive and even emotionally abusive. Anwar and Hashi decide to let her stay. The three girls have a summer of adventure, self-discovery, and sensual exploration. Anwar, meanwhile, struggles with his memories of Bangladesh's war for independence from Pakistan, a marriage that has perhaps grown a bit dull after thirty years, and the temptations of a beautiful tenant living on the top floor. He and Hashi both worry for the two girls they've raised and love. When all their secrets blow up for all of them, Anwar packs his family off to Bangladesh to visit their surviving family--Hashi's father and surviving brother, and her dead brother's adopted son. More discoveries and revelations await them. This is a novel of character exploration and growth, not a whizzbang plot. The Saleems and their friends and family are flawed, fascinating, and mostly very likable people. Recommended. I received a free electronic copy of this book from the publisher via Penguin's First to Read program no reviews | add a review
The New York City Gracie Book Club’s inauguarl pick, this vibrant debut novel set in Brooklyn and Bangladesh follows three young women and a family struggling to make peace with secrets and their past.For as long as she can remember, Ella has longed to feel at home. Orphaned as a child after her parents’ murder and afflicted with hallucinations at dusk, she has always felt more at ease in nature than with people. She traveled from Bangladesh to Brooklyn to live with the Saleems: her uncle Anwar, aunt Hashi, and their beautiful daughter, Charu, her complete opposite. One summer, when Ella returns home from college, she discovers Charu’s friend Maya—an Islamic cleric’s runaway daughter—asleep in her bedroom.As the girls have a summer of clandestine adventure and sexual awakenings, Anwar, the owner of a popular botanical apothecary, has his own secrets, threatening his thirty-year marriage. But when tragedy strikes, the Saleems find themselves blamed. To keep his family from unraveling, Anwar takes them on a fated trip to Bangladesh to reckon with the past, their extended family, and each other. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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