Crescent

I loved the flavor of this and the feel, but after setting it aside for months, I realized I'd gotten the gist and there wasn't enough there to help me pick it back up. (DNF)

Magnificent. Absolutely divine -- subtle, multilayered, nuanced, politically-set, lyrical, bewitching, compelling and *delicious* fiction from an author who teaches down the road from me at PSU. I've seen her name for years, probably passed her in the halls of the lit dept., but somehow never gave her a try until just this week -- thank you, Annie Bloom's, for your "Northwest Writers" shelf! All I can say in the thirty seconds I have left is: it's got mystery, family, politics, tragedy, romance, larger-than-life characters alongside very real, lifesize ones, ironic uncles, love of all kinds, a dog, a jinn or two, food fragrant food tantalizing FOOD, AND recipes in the back when you're done.

This is a perfect book to take you out of your sweaty seat on the Tri-Met #15 on your way to work or home after, to transport you to a place where you can smell the jasmine and taste the ocean and float on clouds of cumin through the window of Sirine's kitchen in Um-Nadia's Lebanese cafe in Teherangeles... Ok, i'm off to the market and then I think I'll read it again while I soak the lentils.

DNF // 129 pages out of 339.
Humdrum is the word to describe this.

I feel sorry to say this but the author failed tremendously to keep me hooked! It was so hard to go through the first chapter.

The characters are merely described physically, the author gave them no personality! Just a bunch of men and one woman that are busy flipping their hair.

The setting is mostly Um-Nadia's café, which the author waited till page 60 to describe! I don't remember if the time this was set is mentioned.

I wasn't able to see a plot! Up to page 129 they were just talking and sometimes reminesceing without making a clear point! I don't even think there would be a climax and dénuement to this!

Almost no events, monotonous!! And la petite histoire d'amour seemed so childish compared to the characters ages!!

The author's writing style wasn't consistent. As far as I read she couldn't focus on one thing and made it all over the place, that's why she failed to keep me interested.

To be fair, I won't rate this. Perhaps it's the most wonderful book in the world. But when I can't get past Page 50 after 5 tries, I have to give up on it. I couldn't connect to this book at all.

On to the next one.

Read pre being on Goodreads. I remember loving it.

Again, this book proves that it is possible to take a cheesy romance novel and pad it up with talk of food and the political situation, making it readable, but never more than that.

OK. So. This is the blurb on Amazon:

"Sirine is thirty-nine and a breathtaking golden-haired beauty. Half-Iraqi and half-American, she was raised in Los Angeles by her Iraqi-born uncle -- a professor at the local university and an endless source of fabulous tales of jinns, sheiks and Bedouins -- after her aid-worker parents were killed in Africa. An exquisitely gifted cook at Cafe Nadia, where homesick Middle Eastern ex-pats collect to drink coffee and savour her perfectly spiced food, Sirine is loved by all. She has, however, never been in love herself, and it is her uncle's dearest wish that she will fall for dashing new college professor, Hanif Al Eyad, a political exile from Baghdad. The two meet at Cafe Nadia and from the start their relationship is steeped in the scents, flavours and textures of Sirine's cooking. But Sirine is not convinced that they have the right ingredients for a life of happy-ever-after; in particular, she worries that she is too American for Hanif."

My comments:
Sirine is not ever described as a breathtaking beauty in the book. She is incredibly pale, with a large mop of unruly blond hair.
The story about djinns and bedouins that her uncle is telling Sirine in this book is interspersed with the story of Sirine and a bit of a disturbance in the beginning, but the more I got into the book, the more I appreciated it breaking up the main storyline a bit.
Sirine is a chef first and foremost. And the descriptions of her dishes, the scents and spices, her cooking and recipes along with the Swedish narrator's excellence made me stick it out to the end.
Because, secondly: Sirine is an idiot. She has no concept of any place outside Los Angeles or any idea of what is happening in the world and her father's and uncle's and Hanif's native Iraq. She just seems to float along and let things happen to her. Also  the fact that she goes off kissing and sleeping with a friend of Hanif's just because she was a bit unsure of where they were in their relationship is incredibly wrong and dumb. Further, I cannot stand the character of Nathan. I understand his tragic experience, as you learn about it bit by bit, but towards the end his defence of taking pictures that he should not be taking simply because "he can't help himself" is extremely annoying.

I think the description of how Sirine reacted to and came to terms, somewhat, with her parents' death was done really well. What I take away from this book is a longing for Lebanese and Iraqi food and a better understanding of the Arab in exile. (S)he, as all other refugees around the world who can never go back, always long for something they will never have.

Diana Abu-Jabner’s second novel, Crescent, explores the tensions, dynamics, and relationships among the people whose lives circulate around a café in Los Angeles’s Iranian community (often referred to as “Tehrangeles”). The novel’s primary narrative stems from the experiences of chef Sirine, who works at the café cooking food based on her own childhood and family memories and recipes. She lost her parents young; they were Iraqi nationals who immigrated to the United States, but pursued numerous humanitarian missions throughout the world and died in Africa during a raid. Sirine was raised by her uncle and still lives him. Her life seems rather uneventful, until she starts to become involved with Han, an apparently sculpted Iraqi professor at the local community college. From there, the story unfolds around her romantic relationship with Han, with many dramatic twists and turns liken to an afternoon soap opera. Han seems to harbor a dark and mysterious past (with unidentified women), leaving Sirine to wonder whether she should trust him to be reliable and loyal to her. It is also worth mentioning that each chapter begins with a parallel narrative (as told to Sirine by her uncle, despite her boredom with the story and annoyance at his efforts) about Auntie Camille on her journey to find her rebellious son—akin to epic Arab poems.
I first picked up this title because I learned that Abu-Jabner is a fellow graduate of Binghamton University and native of Syracuse, and it seemed fun to read the work of a published fiction writer who found her beginnings locally. I was nearly finished with the novel before I started to check out some reviews online. Until that point, I felt that there was something I didn't like about the plot of this book and that really bothered me. The decisions the characters were making were too impulsive and irrational and they did not seem to fit with reality; I did not understand why they were making the choices they were.

I stumbled upon a Goodreads review in which the reader noted that her edition included an interview with the author during which she identified Shakespeare’s Othello as her model for this novel. This helped me to understand a lot about the novel. It made much more sense to me (and also helped me understand a little more the point of the parallel narrative that opened every chapter, which otherwise seemed disconnected—and still does to an extent). Reflecting on Othello as a model explains the theatrical-like dramatization of the characters and their impulsive, irrational behavior—yeah, I tend to read novels as if I were spying on someone’s real life, unless I have reason to do otherwise. After reading the Goodreads review, I read the novel not so much as a novel, per se (whatever that means), but instead a mystical, theatrical dramatization in novel form, and from that point on I didn’t seem to judge the characters as harshly. A change in perspective by changing the lens of which genre one expects to be reading can influence dramatically influence the way one reads and appreciates a text.

Aside from the overly dramatic and impulsive behavior of the characters, the writing is overburdened with somewhat clichéd metaphors, similes, and analogies that strike me as characteristic of an emerging fiction writer’s style. Or maybe the experience of having just come out of reading a John Irving novel (whose writing is packed with plot to develop characters and sparse with descriptive narrative—a practitioner of the “show, don’t tell” strategy) influenced my expectations for reading fiction. Clichés also abounded with what I found to be stereotypical portrayals of women and Middle Eastern or Arab people. Sirine as the main character seems obsessed with her love interest as it consumes her life, and when she begins to question his loyalty she starts to follow him around and imagines she sees him kissing one of his students—the imagined arch-enemy who threatens to steal Han’s love. Cat fight over a man? Come on! This arch-enemy conveys a strange choice in character development as well, as she is a woman who wears a hijab and seems to portray a eccentric sense of suspicion and militancy.

The most enjoyable experience in reading this novel for me was how it weaved a space where multiple worlds and sensory experiences merge: multi-cultural community of Middle-eastern people and people interested in middle-Eastern cultures, academics (students and professors), working class, etc. converged at Nadia’s Café—also a space through which the novel intermingled food, music, dance, literature, and conversation (often contentious). There were also parts of the novel that successfully built tension and kept me engaged to continue reading and want to learn what happened. I did not feel any connection with the characters and their experiences, though I note that through the reviews I read it seems that many other readers did, and that they especially enjoyed the exploration of the transnational experience.

For the reasons I already mentioned above, this wasn’t an excellent read, but a good summer romance with a global socio-political slant. It did seem strange, though, that the novel did not offer more in terms of the reality of an Iraqi’s (or any Middle Eastern’s) experience in a post-9/11 America. The novel was published in 2003, so maybe it was written before then—but the lacking in this area still remains noteworthy.) Even though the novel failed to leave a great impression on me, I know that many would enjoy Abu-Jaber’s novel for all of the reasons I didn’t. If you like theatrical and romantic melodrama in your novels with impulsive and irrational characters, this one’s for you. Maybe if I went back and reread it through the lens of Shakespeare’s Othello, I might appreciate it more, but I’m ready to move onto my next read.