I read this years ago when it first came out, but didn't really remember much other than the general idea--a group of American doctors working at a medical facility in Shiraz, Iran, in the months before the 1979 revolution. I liked the description of Shiraz, Persepolis, and the hospital compound where the story takes place. The plot, however, is melodramatic and implausible. Still, I enjoyed the book.

enh. a kind of interesting story backdrop as it is set in Iran when the shah fell...but the story is marked culturally by when it was written (1970s woman perspective). the story is slow, and the ending is unsatisfactory.

A puzzling novel. I was intrigued by the exotic locale (Iran just before the revolution that unseated the shah) and the protagonist's journey -- literal and spiritual -- but I ended up feeling that I didn't understand her. On the one hand, she sometimes seems like the "silly, promiscuous woman" she at one point describes herself as, but on the other, her responses to the Iranian scene are more sympathetic and open-hearted than just about any other American or European in the book. The author tells her tale perhaps too obliquely, and in the end we're not sure what has happened.

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but this cover was deceptive and messed me up throughout the reading of the book.
The story is about a group of American doctors and their spouses who, during the time of the Shah of Iran, go to a smallish city to help medically. During the course of the book, the Shah's leadership position becomes questionable and the Americans have to decide how to deeal with it.
It is NOT a summer fluff book. It is messy and sometimes hard to followb, but has some insightful descriptions of tangles of emotions.

Based on the cover, I thought this would be a fun summer read. Well, no. Instead, the novel presents the chaos leading up to the overthrow of the Iranian government and its impact on both the countrymen and the foreigners that become part of the fabric via medical assistance, airline workers, CIA operatives, etc. There are so many details in this novel that the reader gets the impression that Diane Johnson has had personal experience with in terms of the intricate intrigue of hospital staffing, housing and policies; the Iranian market places, customs, poetry...and sure enough, with a little Web searching, actual notes taken by the author during this turbulent period of Iranian history are used.
I found myself thinking quite a bit about the "ugly American" pov that is addressed through the various actions that are highlighted through the characters' dialogues and the conflicts that emerge in the novel. There are moments that remind me of Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, when Iranians and African Americans are being discussed. The protagonist, Chloe Fowler, makes some unbelievably foolhardy decisions and on many occasions misreads the people she considers her friends. She puts more energy into her affair than in writing detailed letters to her young children that are taken care of in America. (I found most of her posts annoying.)
Overall, I thought the skill of Johnson in crafting this novel exceptional. T did have difficulty following some of the action because there were so many characters involved. However, in the hands of Johnson, both the country and the characters are flushed out. The prose has a visual quality (surprised this has not been turned into a movie). Perhaps in later editions the cover will be updated to reflect the serious elements presented.
I found it ironic that oil was mentioned as being a "future" weapon.

Scratching my head about how and why this was a Pulitzer finalist. The main character comes across as problematically oblivious - a classic shallow American abroad, only in this case it's during the eve of the Iranian Revolution and the stakes are deadly.

So not a big fan; I never felt connected to the characters and I also felt the author did not delve deeply into the background of the fall of Iran's shah and the implications it had for the ex-pats living in Shiraz. It was as if the main plot could have taken place anywhere - London, Miami, Hong Kong, etc. It felt very superficial and forced.

The first half of the book is good, though the pace is slow, it does give some nice exotic flavor and mystic and suspenseful atmosphere. The second half is very poor, really poor. Too many coincidences and too many incomprehensible actions of the protagonists.

A crucial criterion of a good fiction is that the plots and the actions of the characters should be reasonable. However many plots in this book are totally contrived, making the story ridiculous. Just give some examples, (spoiler below)

(1) you hid in a room during a gunfight and by peering through the door and you just saw a gunman just fall in front of you. And minutes later you drag him in because "there are flies on his face"??

(2) you are a doctor from Paris to be summoned to Iran to perform a top secret mission, namely to cure the Shah. And you forgot the dossier on the plane??

(3) you give your passport to a local friend, tell her to use a fake identity (as you) to pass the immigration to escape, and believe that the passport will be mailed back?

(4) you never, ever feel panic during the revolution, and are always blindly optimistic that there will be no trouble to pass the immigration even you DO NOT have a passport??

(5) the missing passport page turn out to appear in the last minute, in the airport??

(6) The kidnapper, who brought the hostage down the cave and would like to murder him, happened to slip in the steep down stairs of the cave (isn't it reasonable that the hostage should be "in front of" the kidnapper so that even a slip will destroy both?)

(7) and, why if you are to murder your hostage in a hot tourist attraction cave?

(8) etc, etc, there are too many to list.

Almost all characters are weak enough (except Abbas), especially the two main characters, Chloe and Hugh. Both are stereotype and not convincing and Chloe is extraordinary disgusting. She seems to live in a parallel time and space and is always detached (or is it the intention of the author to make Chloe so unrealistic)?

My feeling is that the author cannot decide what the book want to be. It wants simultaneously to be a love story, a history fiction, a mystery story, a spy fiction, even a Bildungsroman --- and the result is baffling. The worst is that all are deliberately put in the background at the dawn of the Iranian revolution, but strangely almost nothing is said about that. The only relevant scene is the gathering of the people in the square, which however reads very trite indeed. Our main character, Chloe, even in this dire and tense moment did not get into the swing of thing.

3.5 stars for the first 150 pages. 0.5 star for the rest. It is a very big disappointment that it was a Pulitzer nominee.

This book got off to a slow start, but the crescendo and denoument are certainly worth the wait. This is one of Johnson's most serious novels, delving into the condition of American doctors abroad and the Persian people at the dawn of the revolution in Iran. Although the action is witnessed mostly from behind the confines of a compound of intellectual elites by Chloe Fowler, Protagonist of Questionable Morals, Johnson manages to engender sympathy for and interest in her and the others' stories, create genuinely surprising plot points and execute satisfying character development. The only other flaw of this book is that it presents too much detail about the inner workings of the medical school hospital, which I'm guessing was the lens through which the author intended to reveal the Iranian situation, however, this was much better shown through the female characters' foibles rather that through the male doctors' work life.

A book of its time, perhaps? I enjoyed reading it but at the end really didn't know what to think.

did not finish.. sorry, I'll try again another time. While the author was very eloquent in description and exposition, I just found the writing unengaging.

I liked it but found the ending unfulfilling. No resolve.