From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Maryam is the willful daughter of an Iranian general who backed the Shah of Iran during the (U.S.-backed) 1953 coup that toppled Iran's prime minister, Mossadegh. In the midst of the turmoil, and with the threat of an arranged marriage hanging over her, Maryam is sheltered one night by her father's trusted assistant, Ali, a young man near her age—16—for whom she feels a shy attraction. And though still a virgin the next morning, their feelings for each other are clear. Maryam is sent away by her aloof father ("she is no daughter of mine"), a painful memory that, decades later, shatters her settled marriage to an understanding if pained British husband, and bewilders and angers her own daughter. A 40-year separation from Ali and a tender reunion in a remote village are just a few turns of the intense plot, full of tragic coilings and romantic passion, that make this a wonderfully intricate debut novel. Crowther, daughter of a British father and an Iranian mother, powerfully depicts Maryam's wrenching romantic and nationalistic longings, exploring the potency of heritage and the pain of exile.
(Jan. 2) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
After his mother dies, young Saeed travels from Iran to London to live with his aunt Maryam. But the death of her sister, the last of her family, has pitched Maryam into despair and rekindled long-suppressed rage. After a dreadful scene with her pregnant daughter, Sara, Maryam, who has never been fully present in her marriage to a kind Englishman, flees to Iran, her heart's abode. Crowther, who, like Sara, is the daughter of an Iranian mother and a British father, slips back in time to tell the grim story of Maryam's forbidden girlhood love and the barbaric punishment her politically powerful father meted out, thus unveiling the cruelty of relentlessly misogynist customs. But when Sara, who is happily married to her Englishman, journeys for the first time to her mother's homeland, she discovers that while little has changed for women, beauty and generosity are part and parcel of Iranian life, as is an unexpected form of freedom. Despite some contrivances, Crowther's debut is spellbinding, and her cross-cultural perception and empathy are illuminating and affecting.
Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
