Book Review: In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib

In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib

Published by: Viking

Published on: August 11, 2015

Page Count: 272

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

Available Formats: Hardcover, Kindle

My Review:

The Al-Menshawys, who immigrated to the United States from Egypt 15 years before, are living the American dream. Father Samir, mother Nagla, grandmother Ehsan, and teenage children Khaled, Hossam and Fatima are living comfortably in a suburban small town outside of New York City. For over a decade they've been best friends with the Bradstreets next door. Hossam's relationship with the Bradstreets' daughter Natalie has become more than a friendship until suddenly and violently, the worlds of both families are changed forever. What the Al-Menshawys chalked up to teenage moodiness was more serious than they anticipated. When Natalie ends their relationship, Hossam takes her life and his own in a nearby park. 

When the book begins, these two families have spent the year since the deaths of their children quietly removed from each other. The Al-Menshawys have carefully navigated their community. Samir's medical practice has suffered, Ehsan is keeping house while Nagla is still coming to terms with what has happened and Khaled is still getting harassed at school.

To commemorate the anniversary of their daughter's death, Jim and Cynthia are planning a tree planting and a memorial service at the park, and the public has been invited to attend. As a courtesy, Cynthia stops by the Al-Menshawys to make sure they're aware of the service. It's the first time the two families have spoken in a year.

Though the Al-Menshawys have grieved and struggled to make sense of Hossam's actions, the anniversary of the deaths brings to the surface the emotions that each family member individually has tried to keep quiet.

I liked so many things about In the Language of Miracles. The back-and-forth of the storyline works well as a structure, as it keeps the information dripping out for the reader a little at a time. I liked learning about the Egyptian culture of the Al-Menshawys and how it both changed and stayed the same as they settled into their American life. I liked this family of sad, believable characters. Hassib wrote convincingly about three different generations that although they still lived together under one roof, they were growing further apart. 

This book is a good reminder to appreciate and forgive cultural differences, realize that the grief process goes on long after a funeral service has ended and that everyone handles a loved one's death in their own time and on their own terms. This book is a good reminder to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, as you never know what they may be facing underneath the surface.

Four out of Five Stars

If you liked this book, you’ll like Zeitoun by Dave Eggers and And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard.

A Modern-Day Juliet

I recently finished reading Anne Fortier's Juliet, a caper through Italy's Siena, the supposed setting for the original version of Romeo and Juliet, made famous by William Shakespeare but a story that predates him. This historical fiction novel is one I picked up off the Notable Paperbacks table on a trip to Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books. Whatever I pick up from this table never disappoints. One of the reviews cited on the back cover says the book "reads like a Da Vinci Code for the smart modern woman." So of course I had to have it.

Much like another fictional book I've recently about a previous work, The Sherlockian, Juliet alternates back and forth between the heroine, the modern-day Juliet, an American woman in her mid-20s who returns to her native Italy to sort out a family secret and possible inheritance from her mother, and the original Juliet, the daughter in a powerful, feuding family in the 1340s. The two Juliets are connected by family lineage and the modern-day one has a mystery to solve with the help of her twin sister Janice. The two of them have to decide who to trust of the new Italian relatives and acquaintances, a task that proves difficult.

I loved the spunky modern Juliet and how she approaches her mystery. I liked the characters she came in contact and the descriptions of how society in this small Italian town gets things done. Of course I liked it because of the Shakespeare references and this timeless romantic story. But the biggest reason why I picked up this book and enjoyed it so much is because I've been to Siena.

About 10 years ago my grandmother and I visited the northern half of Italy with a tour group and Siena was one of the places where we spent a day. We learned about Il Palio, an ancient horserace that has happened twice each year since the Middle Ages and then saw the Piazza del Campo where the finish line of the race is in the center of town. There is one horse and jockey in the race for each neighborhood in the city, and the winner gets major bragging rights until the next race: first priority seating in restaurants around Siena and all kinds of other preferrential treatment.

Here are a few of my (scanned in) photos of my visit to Siena. Whether or not you've been to this beautiful, ancient Italian town, I highly recommend reading Fortier's Juliet.

Where the Wild Things Are

"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him 'WILD THING!' and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything."

These are the opening lines of one of my all-time favorite books, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak died this week and is being celebrated right now all over the place (I like USA Today's article). I can hardly think of my childhood without remembering being read this book on many, many nights before bed by my mom or grandmother. My childhood copy is still at my parents' house, but my grandmother's copy was one of the first things I grabbed when we were sorting through her things after she died.

Chances are that if you're my friend and you've had a baby, this is what I've given you (along with some Robert McCloskey or Dr. Seuss). I have Where the Wild Things Are Christmas ornaments and one of the wild things even provides me with daily inspiration at work (he's really my only coworker).

The book made it into the top 50 on USA Today's Best-Selling Books List for the first time in 2009 thanks to the movie adaptation that came out that year. Since its publication in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are has sold 10 million copies. A childhood favorite for many more than just me.

Typewriters

I love old typewriters. One of my earliest memories is of my dad hunched over the typewriter in the room that would later be my younger sister's, typing out purchase orders and business letters (to this day he still uses the hunt-and-peck typing method). The typewriter had been my mom's in college, and we also had my grandfather's college typewriter around the house. Both were manual, of course, and you had to mash the keys down pretty hard to get the letters to appear at the right darkness to be legible and consistent.

Also when I was little, my grandmother had in her home office an electric typewriter, which I thought was one of the best toys ever. After pounding the keys of the two manual typewriters at my house, I found the keys of her typewriter to be almost too sensitive. (It was the color of Grey Poupon and was still in the same spot when she died two years ago.) I made lots of mistakes, and I don't remember her machine having correction tape.

I think I was in the sixth grade when I asked for a typewriter for either Christmas or my birthday. It, too, was electric (fancy!) and I could backspace and white out over mistakes I'd made, retyping right over it as if I'd never made a mistake! A few years later my family broke down and bought a word processor, the step between a typewriter and a computer, and finally, my parents bought their first computer after I had gone to college.

Now that I'm on my laptop the better part of most days writing, researching, editing what someone else has written and a host of other work- and fun-related things, I can't even imagine what it would take for me to write something just straight out. The way I write things is usually not start to finish. I can't even think of what it would be like for me if I had to retype a page each time I thought to insert a new paragraph somewhere in the middle. But I guess I would if I had to.

So with all that said, I just loved a series of photos I found via Twitter (be sure to follow me @betsyrhame) yesterday of writers with their typewriters (also note how many of these authors have a burning cigarette in their hands. I love that too. Not something you see too much anymore). Check it out.

Ian McEwan Novels

Years ago my grandmother asked me if I'd ever read any of Ian McEwan's novels. When I told her no, she came back with something along the lines of, "Well, you'd better." Jump ahead a few years to the release of the movie Atonement. I read the novel in preparation and then saw it with two friends. I enjoyed both immensely, and this one is right up there in the plot-twists-I-never-saw-coming category.

This year I nominated another McEwan novel, Saturday, as a book club pick for one of the groups I'm in, and the book didn't get chosen. It's still on my own list to read though. Then, at a recent used book sale at the Decatur Library, I found Amsterdam for 50 cents (winner of the Booker Prize in 1998). It's less than 200 pages and I breezed right through it in a couple of sittings. The plot in this one's twisty too, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then again, I seem to love any story that involved ethics decisions in journalism (Almost Famous, All the President's Men, etc.). Read and enjoy!

Miep Gies and Anne Frank

I heard the news this morning that Miep Gies, 100, passed away in The Netherlands. She was one of around 20,000 other regular Dutch citizens who hid people of the Jewish faith from the Nazis during World War II. She was the last living member of the group who hid the eight people and provided for them for more than two years. After the Frank family and the other four people hiding with them were found, Gies found Anne's diary and kept it hidden until she gave it to Otto Frank, Anne's father, after the war had ended. She had been Otto's secretary before the war.

Otto decided to publish an edited version of Anne's diary in 1947. I received The Diary of a Young Girl from my grandmother for Christmas when I was only 11. I read it very soon after receiving it and I remember feeling fascinated by this girl's diary and all that was in it. Of course, as a fifth-grader, all of the political undertones and much of what was going on outside the walls of The Secret Annex were lost on me at the time. However, I've read it seven more times since then, and reading it has meant more to me each time because I knew a lot more about the circumstances that brought Anne and her family into hiding, and what the world has been like since. As you can probably imagine, my paperback copy is one of the most dog-eared books I have.

My grandmother must have known I'd like the book, because she also purchased Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family by Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold in 1988 at an Anne Frank exhibition that came to her city. She may have purchased the diary for me at the same time, but waited a few years before giving me Gies' book.

A few years after I received The Diary of a Young Girl, a new edition was published that includes material Otto opted not to publish in the original version. I have a copy of the newer one too and have read it once. It includes Anne's writing of her own sexual discovery and rants about other residents of The Secret Annex. The newer version is about a third longer than the older and more well-known one.

A few years ago, I happened upon a book called The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank: The Stories of Six Women Who Knew Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer in a used book store. I bought it, but have never read it.

It sounds like it might be time for me to read this and to reread Anne's diary.

The Gift of Reading from My Grandmother

I’ve talked quite a bit about my paternal grandmother, Dot, here, here and here in this blog. I can credit her more than anyone else with developing my love for books and reading. Over the years we’ve discussed book after book after book that we’ve both read.

She was diagnosed in September 2007 at age 82 with breast cancer and decided to fight it. She was the oldest patient her oncologist had ever had. She was a yellow dog democrat, and told her oncologist during one of their initial meetings that he needed to keep her alive long enough to see a democrat in the White House. He did. She managed to live with the breast cancer through both good days and bad days for more than two years. A year ago, she even felt good enough to have my father drive her from Greensboro, NC, to Atlanta to visit me for the weekend.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer on Tuesday, October 20 and died peacefully on Saturday, October 24. Even the day before she died we were talking Flannery O’Connor and looking through my Savannah pictures in her hospital room. She loved hearing about all the literary trips I’ve been taking this year, and she was thrilled that I was three weeks away from visiting Rowan Oak. If she had lived until I had gotten back from that trip, no doubt she would have wanted all the details and to have a look at the pictures.

The real kicker to all of this is that my maternal grandfather passed away less than four weeks before my grandmother, so my family had experienced two deaths almost at the same time. Though their children, my parents, married in 1974, my four grandparents had been close friends for years before that, and it was an added bonus to have their children marry each other. My grandfather and grandmother lived their last months on the same hall of an assisted living facility and died in hospital rooms next door to each other. Here is a picture of me with these two grandparents on my third birthday in 1981:

I have many, many pictures of me at all ages with all my grandparents, but for the purposes of this blog, here is one of my favorites with Dot on our Italy trip. We’re in Juliet’s Garden in Verona with her statue. That year it was my Christmas card photo.

For lack of a better place to mention this, and while I’m on the topic of the Italy trip, while we were in Rome, I visited the Keats-Shelley House just to the right of the Spanish Steps (my grandmother checked out the Steps instead while I went in the House). Here are a couple of photos from that, and here is an excerpt from my travel journal from that day (March 10, 2004):

“After lunch we visited the famous Spanish Steps and had some time on our own. I broke away from the rest of my group members to visit the Keats-Shelley House, a small museum dedicated to the British and American poets, novelists and artists of the Romantic period who spend time in Rome during the first half of the 19th century. I actually stood in the room where Keats died from consumption at the young age of 26. It was thrilling!”

So my excuse for nearly abandoning my blog for the month of October is, I hope, warranted. I have a lot in store for the blog in the next few months, so please keep reading.

Venice

Several years ago, my grandmother and I spent 10 days in northern and central Italy with about 200 other Methodists from central and western North Carolinia. We had a wonderful time in a beautiful country that I want to revisit again someday. My grandmother is an avid reader like me, but she particularly enjoys mysteries, and I'm not that fond of them. I took her advice, though, and started reading Donna Leon's mystery series set in Venice. I just finished the first book, Death at La Fenice, and really enjoyed it. I'll be getting the second one in the series, Death in a Strange Country, from the library soon.

After I finished the book, I went looking for my photos from the trip. Here are a few of my favorites of Venice. Enjoy!

Author Appearance: Donna Leon

I’ve mentioned before that my grandmother is one of the people in my life who is directly responsible for making me so interested in reading. In 2004, she and I joined a tour group and spent 10 days in northern and central Italy. Venice was my favorite stop. I took three rolls of film in one day there (I converted to digital in 2007). I’d love to upload photos of Venice, but I’ll have to get them scanned in first.

My grandmother’s favorite genre is the mystery, and I read very few of them. But at her recommendation, I’m planning to read Donna Leon’s series of crime novels set in Venice. I’m on the waiting list at the library for the first one, Death at La Fenice. However, I attended her lecture at the Margaret Mitchell House promoting her most recent publication from the Guido Brunetti series, About Face.

I had a slight concern that I might be missing out by not having read any of the books yet. Lucky for me, I was wrong. I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy listening to an author talk about how her book came about. It’s been a while since I’ve been to an author lecture (I so miss attending events at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books!). One of the best things Leon said was that an important character in her most recent release originated from a woman Leon stood next to in Munich for approximately three seconds. The idea of that woman becoming a character in her book kept following her around until Leon built the book around her. To know more about this intriguing character, I have to read 17 books before About Face. I guess I better get busy!

Leon also talked a lot about being an outsider in Venice (she has been a permanent resident for over 25 years), and the three issues that are Italy’s biggest problems: its government, the mafia, and garbage. The last of these plays a central role in About Face.

An introduction

I’ve always been a reader. My parents read books to me all the time as a child (favorites include Where the Wild Things Are, Morris and the Disappearing Bag, and anything by Robert McCloskey). My maternal grandmother was a librarian and a children’s literature professor, and she gave me books for birthdays and Christmases (she still does). Later, she’d ask me about them. So from an early age, I got used to reading a book and reporting on it.

I majored in English twice. At Meredith College, I attended lectures by Seamus Heaney, Lucille Clifton, and others. I started going to see authors at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC, and saw Amy Tan, Kaye Gibbons, and others. I had to memorize the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. I wore a crown to read the part of Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my Shakespeare course. I delved into the books and biographical information of countless American, Irish, and British writers. My two favorites were Harper Lee and Willa Cather.

My second English degree is from NC State University. Here, I still focused on British and American literatures, but my interests shifted when I took a course called simply, The Memoir. We read what writers wrote about their writing and their lives, and it sucked me in. I followed that up with a creative nonfiction class and I began to focus on the memoir, autobiography, and oral history. I strayed from a traditional literature thesis and wrote my great-grandmother’s biography. It was the most fun project I’ve ever done.

Now, three years later, I’m living in Atlanta, having moved here after my wedding in 2007. During that first summer I was unemployed and didn’t know many people, so I read. I read so much that I added the book titles to a list when I finished each one. Even now that I’m working, I’m still reading an average of one book a week, and adding it to the bottom of that list. As of today, there are 110 books on that list, just shy of two years after I started it.

Now that I am out of school and free to read whatever I want, I still read memoir and autobiography, bestselling fiction and nonfiction, many things recommended to me by others, and yes, even chick lit. I watch movies that correspond with books, but I always read the books first. I get suckered into mega-bestselling series like Harry Potter (but I won’t watch the movies) and Twilight (I might watch the movies).

Just because I’m no longer in school doesn’t mean I don’t reflect on all I take in. I still think about one book in relation to another, and compare an author's early works to later ones. So consider this my new English paper in a format that works for me. I will talk about what I’m reading, where I’m going, and what I’m watching, all with regard to literature. I’m taking advantage of being a Metro Atlanta resident, where literary events abound, and there are several interstates to take me all over the Southeast as I do some literary traveling.

Keep reading and enjoy.