I'll be thoroughly honest, it took a lot of effort to finish this book. I really had to push through it. I found too much of it contrived, and I really only got through it by the little chapter-opening stories, which turned out to be just as contrived in the end. The "love story" in this book quickly became overbearing, so much so that I generally became annoyed with the constant appearance of Hanif. I just really wasn't impressed by not only the writing, but the development of the story, and I can't say I've finished the 395 pages of my copy glad that I did. I'm honestly excited to send this book off to someone who'd enjoy it.

“I’m yours. I’m utterly lost to you.”

Excerpt From
Crescent
Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jabar does an excellent job in bringing together two stories that keep the reader intrigued as well as never wanting to put down the book. Truly one that I enjoyed and especially loved that she added recipes of some of the delectable dishes.
Great summer read - romance, adventure, and suspense.

I read "Crescent" because I enjoyed "Arabian Jazz" and am interested in better understanding what it feels like to be exiled from your home.

What I appreciated most about "Crescent" was the immersive, sultry setting that pulls you in much like the lazy LA morning fog. Almost every page takes time to share Sirine's sensory escape into her cooking or the details of the paradise that surrounds her. Think palm fronds, sweaty bicycle rides, numerous turquoise pools, and dancing bouganveilla blossoms. But beneath that paradise, lurks some darker secrets...

While the mystery kept me interested, I also enjoyed trying to unravel the parallel Abu-Jaber is making between the folklore of Abdelrahman Salahadin's trickster adventures and the story of Sirine and Han. What starts out as purely fantastical, magical folktales--Abdelrahman is walking the ocean floor with the fish to escape his enslavers--later evolves into much more realistic stories, just as the modern plot flips toward the unbelievable. (One might say Crescent is a story of stories of stories, which is always enchanting to me!) Close readers will be rewarded in the end for following the parallels and "going along with" Sirine's uncle's seemingly-pointless storytelling. Hang on for it!

The parts of this book that I liked, I really liked. The descriptions of cooking, photography, and identity were really compelling.

There was a kind of light folkloric aspect of the book that tied in nicely until it didn't. All in all an author I'm glad I diescovered when sorting through used books and look forward to reading more

This review will in no way be objective. I first met the author of this book back in the late 1970s when we were both undergraduates in a writing program at The State University of New York at Oswego. You could tell that she was a special person and worked hard to learn the craft of writing, eventually moving from the realm of craft to art. Now, 45 years later, I have read all of her books, and own most of them. I just re-read Crescent after I had a Facebook Messenger discussion with Diana about book-banning. I'm now a retired Librarian who spent most of my career in a public library, but I retired before book-banning became the threat that is is now. Someone had called Crescent "too erotic", and as someone who has read actual erotica, I find that very hard to comprehend. I think that person must have made an error that is all-too-common these days, that of confusing the sexual with the sensual, and confusing love with sex. Sure, cooking is sensual; I bake our bread, and kneading and shaping dough can be very sensual, i.e., a treat for the sense of touch, smell, and the anticipation of how good the bread will taste once it is baked. There is a lot of the sensual in Crescent; the feel of the pastry dough for the baklava and the sound and wonderful aroma of onions and mushrooms sizzling in a pan. But anything sexual is handled beautifully, with love and humor ("We're safe!") Anything sexual in Crescent is the result of love, and ultimately, love is what the entire book is about. Love of family, including the grief that comes when loved ones like Sirine's parents are lost; love of friends; love of one's country and culture; and the contentment of a sunny day and the chance to lie on a hammock for a few minutes. But this book is also a deep exploration of culture and tradition, of knowing from whom we are descended and how we bring our own gifts to the world and the neighborhoods in which we find ourselves. The book has Sirine's cooking, but it also has Arabic poetry, dance, music, and photography. I loved diving into learning more about a place and culture with which I am not that familiar. As the owner of an Arabian horse, I have a small tie to Arabic culture and want to know more about it. Diana's writing is also a joy; I was right! She does have a gift, and she has worked hard to use that gift to create her art. I have always used the term "lyrical" to describe her writing, but in Crescent, the writing flows like a river, like the Tigris, Euphrates and Nile, all joining together to create one of the world's oldest cultures and inviting the reader to jump into the river and experience folklore, legend and mystery, ultimately finding that the greatest mystery lies in the human heart. You may want to read Crescent more than once. I read it the first time quite a few years ago, shortly after Diana first published it, but I got much more out of it the second time. It is an extraordinary book.

Sometimes you just want a book that's easy to read, interesting, and incredibly well-written. This book hits all three marks. Read the full review on my blog to find out how I learned a little about the Iraqi-American culture, fell in love with Sirine and Han, and developed a wicked craving for lentils.

i had to read it quickly for a college class, but i really enjoyed this book! it was very satisfying for all of the loose ends to be tied together at the end.

this is the first fiction book (that isn't related to the genre i usually read) that i have finished since i was younger. i'm not always a love story kinda person, but this book is a great exception.

it was amazing to analyze the food in this novel! everything is so intricate and carefully placed. recommend for my love story people!

I read this more slowly than other books. It's a mood and food and setting kind of book. Dreamy, almost. Some people were unsettled by the focus on food...I loved it, The smell and taste and texture of food are important to Sirine, the main character, and they ground the book. Everything, the weather, the ethnic shops, the sound of Arabic in the West L.A.restaurant where she works, provide a setting that is as important in some ways as the characters. The magical characters in the opening paragraphs of each chapter do the same. The novel is tender, lyrical and aching with grief. So glad I chose this book for the reading challenge I'm doing. It is "A book that is set in a restaurant." All the books I miss by reading only favorite authors. My discovery of this book was so random...and utterly lucky.

Sirine is at a poetry reading. A professor from the college near her workplace is giving a poetry reading. He quotes from a poet who he refers to as his spiritual mentor. "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are so many ways to kneel and touch the ground. I know those words, and knew that Rumi was this man's mentor. It is an echo of why Sirine is a cook. She loves food, the smells, the tastes, the herbs, the stirring, the life of a restaurant. She thinks that food should taste of where it comes from. Though the restaurant is Lebanese, many of the recipes comes from her father's homeland, Iraq. The story is interwoven with the Arabian tale of a man who was paid money to drown...and always escaped, until... This strategy is very much like Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, another favorite book of min.

Sirine has never married. She lives with her Iraqi immigrant uncle. Her meeting with Hanai is crucial to the story. Aziz, the poet, now teaching a class at the college, complains about a woman in the class who is always yelling about Islam being so repressive. Essentially Aziz believes that's what religion is supposed to be. He's an impossible and nasty and wonderfully described character.

A well written but less than compelling story.

I loved it until the last chapter.

The characters are complex and believable. While they exist for the story, they also show varieties of Middle Easterners--important when thinking of the time it was written, between the two Gulf wars. The setting of the novel spans time from the Iran-Iraq war to the aftermath of the First Gulf War. There is political comment,but it is always in character and not intrusive.

The uncle telling the Abdelrahman Salahadin stories provides more than humor (though humor there is, especially in the mermaid in the electric scooter). It provides a mythic dimension and an occasion for literary comment.: "The thing about listening to a story like this, Habeebti, is not to fret over chasing sown the details, but to let the spirit of things show themselves. Learn how to just let it be" (212). In part, I think that is how we are to read much of the novel, for the spirit of things. I thoroughly enjoyed the slow pace of the first 2/3 in that light. In the last third, the pace did quicken, and some of the lushness disappeared, but it returned for the better part of the ending. Another literary comment:"Haveebti,here is something you have to understand about stories:they can point you in the right direction but they can't take you all the way there"(384). To an extent the novel does this pointing ending, with one flaw.  From the time Han returned to Iraq I kept holding my breath: would she manage to end the novel without the happy ending of his return. She did not. Up to that last chapter the ending was a beautiful narrative of dealing with grief. The happy ending seemed a cheap shot directed at readers who want happy endings, who can't deal with grief.

The Salahadin stories also provided a critique of Hollywood and how it treats foreign actors and plots--not giving Arab roles to Arabs, but giving Arabs Mexican or Italian roles, and it critiques others in its critique of Lawrence of Arabia, faulting its telling as a European hero's story instead of an Arab's.

The style is rich. Food becomes a character, a way of communicating, as in other of Abu-Jaber's writings. The world of the international student/professor/expat is so vivid that I often forgot the setting was Los Angeles. I could get lost in reading for its own sake without wondering what happens next--especially in the first two thirds.

What beautiful writing! Right from the opening. I really like the juxtaposition of Sirine's uncle's story about Abdelrahman Salahadin with the "real life" story about Sirine in California.

     The sky is white.
     The sky shouldn't be white because it's after midnight and the moon has not yet appeared an nothing is black and as ancient as the night in Baghdad. It is dark and fragrant as the hanging gardens of the extinct city of Chaldea, as dark and still as the night in the uppermost chamber of the spiraling Tower of Babel.
     But it's white because white is the color of an exploding rocket. [chapter one]
~ ~ ~ ~
      "So," he says quickly, dusting crumbs away as if he could hide the evidence. "Isn't it time for the next chapter of the moralless tale of Abdelrahman Salahadin?

*

      Abdelrahman Salahadin carries himself like a handful of water. [...] At night he is almost invisible. He moves seemingly without moving the way the eye moves over words on a page. [chapter two]
~ ~ ~ ~
      Are you paying attention? The moralless story requires, of course, greater care and general alertness than your run-of-the-mill, everyday story with a moral, which basically gives you the Cliffs Notes version of itself in the end anyway. A moralless story is deep yet takes no longer to tell than it takes to steep a cup of mint tea. [chapter seven]
~ ~ ~ ~
      It is Sirine's favorite time, when the night turns black as bitter chocolate and the stars pop out. [...] She stays after all the others have gone home. She doesn't turn the lights on but works by the moon and the streetlights and by touch, spreading small brined grape leaves flat on the cutting board, slicing out the tiny stems, wrapping the star-spoked leaves around rice and meat. It's a soothing task she likes to save for the solitary meditations of evening: her first chance to think over the night before in Han's apartment, which seems already somehow much more important than an ordinary first date. She sighs and eats a grape leaf straight from the brine, her mouth puckering on its tart, raw taste. The night is so still she half-imagines she can hear the distant music he was playing: now it is ingrained in the faint shush of the breeze as she puts the knifepoint to the leaf. She lets the feeling creep over her until it vibrates under her skin, luxuriating in the sweetness of the recollection. [chapter seven]