Recent Reviews
Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on September 23, 2021
San Francisco is the perfect setting for this tremendous, tragic novel by Nawaaz Ahmed. ‘Radiant Fugitives’ includes an eclectic mix of people, perspectives, and possibilities. In the microcosm of one fractured family, Ahmed explores the complexity of loving family members with divergent values and beliefs. Digging into one family’s disturbing dynamics, Ahmed links family conflicts to broader themes of sexuality, religion, and race. His novel captures the emotions that divide us and then delves into how these differences might be overcome.
The year is 2010. Seema Hussein is a forty-year-old Muslim Indian woman working for Kamala Harris’ campaign for Attorney General of California. Seema is about to give birth to an unplanned child conceived with her soon to be ex-husband, Bill. The novel’s omniscient narrator is their son, whom Seema plans to name Ishraaq. It is a surprising choice of narrator, but Ahmed makes it work.
Seema’s dying mother, Nafeesa, has traveled from Chennai, India, to be with Seema for the birth. Her younger sister Tahera, a doctor and observant Muslim, has also come to support her sister. The Hussein family has been estranged for fifteen years. In Seema’s apartment in the Mission, they cook, clean and talk about their lives. But the conversation is fraught as each woman attempts to avoid the emotional minefields of past grievances and present judgments. Hurt, betrayal and misunderstanding cloud many interactions. Nonetheless, moments arise when the sharp edges of their jealousies and resentments soften, and the tenderness of their love for each other is recovered.
Looming large is the patriarch, Naeemullah Hussein, who has not traveled to San Francisco for the birth of his grandchild. Naeemullah had doted on his daughters, especially Seema, who had basked in her father’s love. However, after Seema completed her Oxford education, her father sought to arrange her marriage. When she revealed she was a lesbian, he replied, “I’d rather have no daughter than one who makes me hang my head in shame.” Exiled, she moved to the United States, worked as an activist for South Asian queer organizations and eventually settled in San Francisco.
Seema’s banishment from the family initiated a cascade of conflict and emotional isolation. Tahera decided that she, unlike her sister, would adhere to the family’s expectations. She asked her father to arrange a marriage to an observant American Muslim. She relished replacing Seema as the favored child. Yet, her father derided her dedication to Islam. It becomes clear that Naeemullah’s narcissistic approach to love has caused a ripple effect of pain that required his wife and daughters to juggle their allegiances. Ultimately, Nafeesa regrets that she has never attempted to understand the struggles and sorrows of her daughters.
‘Radiant Fugitives’ also explores the ways that broader political culture affects individual lives. The novel tackles questions of faith, race and identity in our country’s political life. Of particular focus is Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Seema and Bill fell in love and married as they worked tirelessly for Barack Obama’s candidacy. As a Black man, Bill felt intense hope as he vigorously campaigned for Obama. Seema too was lifted by the poetry of the campaign, but the optimism of that moment faded. Obama’s pragmatism on many issues, including LGBTQ rights, disappointed her.
Using one family’s disputes and misjudgments as his canvas, Ahmed has painted a poignant family tragedy and a meditation on the wellsprings of conflicts. The story is adorned with verses from the Quran and writing from Keats, Wordsworth and Barack Obama. Obama best captures Ahmed’s theme, “All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort to find common ground.” Obama’s message for civic life could be Ahmed’s for family life. ‘Radiant Fugitives’ will inspire readers to seek empathy, withhold judgment, accept our flawed humanity and marvel at the miracle of being alive.
Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on July 29, 2021
Linda Rui Feng’s debut novel “Swimming Back to Trout River” is an exquisite meditation on love and loss in the wake of China’s ruinous Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. The book brings to life how repressive regimes create lasting emotional scars on individuals touched by their cruelties. The protagonists are vulnerable but resilient as they leave China to start anew in America. Their hopeful moments are few and fleeting as the wounds of the old world shape their choices in the new.
Feng, a former San Francisco resident and professor in East Asian studies at the University of Toronto, has written a book that’s not primarily about China’s politics. Instead, it is an evocative exploration of the inner life of specific immigrants and the burdens they carry with them.
The story begins in China in 1981 as Cassia, a young mother, abandons her 5-year-old daughter Junie at the home of her in-laws. The story of why Cassia leaves Junie unfolds slowly. Junie’s grandparents live in a small village, near a river, where they dote on Junie. Born without legs below her knees, Junie is not deterred by her disability. She is bright, inquisitive and loves her grandparents.
As Junie’s 12th birthday approaches, Junie’s father Momo, who is in the United States pursuing a graduate degree, writes that he will bring her to America to join him and Cassia. What Junie and her grandparents do not know is that when Cassia arrived in San Francisco, she did not proceed with her plan to meet Momo. She works as a nanny for a little boy, while Momo, many miles away, still hopes to reunite with Cassia and Junie.
Cassia and Momo met while working in a factory town in remote China. Both were traumatized by horrifying events during the Cultural Revolution; each witnessed terrifying acts of physical violence and emotional cruelty. Memories of the period remained too raw for them to share, and their emotional distance compounded over time. The birth of their disabled daughter exacerbated their separateness. Each reacted differently to her arrival. A subsequent and tragic life-changing event fueled their growing isolation.
As the story develops, it becomes apparent that although they left China, Momo and Cassia did not leave their personal demons behind. Their interior lives remain bound up in the anguish of their younger selves. By the end of the novel, we learn the secrets that haunt their lives. The narration artfully moves between past and present while the characters’ emotional complexity deepens.
A separate stream in the narrative revolves around Dawn, whom Momo met at university before knowing Cassia. A gifted musician, Dawn makes a mark in Momo’s life, inspiring his lifelong passion for music. Dawn, too, endured tragedy during the Cultural Revolution. While in San Francisco as part of a musical delegation from China, Dawn made the difficult decision to defect. Music’s ability to motivate, nurture and touch human souls is a prominent theme in the story.
Another powerful theme focuses on the Chinese word yuanfen, for which there is no English translation. The concept refers to the idea that invisible threads, which can be identified but not completely understood, connect people and events. Numerous examples of yuanfen create drama and tension as the novel crescendos toward its surprising conclusion.
I might have preferred a different ending, but this quibble doesn’t detract from the book’s extraordinary virtues. Feng, a gifted writer and storyteller, astutely and unusually conveys the role of emotions in determining life choices. “Swimming Back to Trout River” celebrates the power of hope, the interconnectedness of people, the constancy of grief and the complexity of love: together, a microcosm of the human condition.
Vera by Carol Edgarian
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on June 27, 2021 https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/to-find-out-what-life-in-sf-was-like-after-the-1906-quake-read-vera/
For less than one minute on the morning of April 18th, 1906, San Francisco was shaken to its core. Buildings crumbled, fires raged and most of downtown San Francisco was destroyed. Carol Edgarian’s recent novel ‘Vera’ allows us to visit that time and place. Blending history with a coming-of-age story, this immersive novel chronicles the ’06 earthquake and its aftershocks. By the book’s end, we come to admire both Vera, the eponymous protagonist, and the citizens of San Francisco for their gritty resiliency in the quake’s aftermath.
We meet Vera in the first two pages. Now more than a hundred years old, she recalls how the quake changed her life. She begins her story on her fifteenth birthday, nine days before the earthquake. Vera is looking forward to seeing her mother, Rose, with whom she does not live. Rose is a famous San Francisco madam who operates a bordello in the bawdy Barbary Coast. When Vera was a toddler, Rose had arranged for Vera to be raised by a widow named Elsa Johnson. In return, Rose pays the household expenses for Elsa and her daughter Piper.
Minutes after the shaking stops on April 18th, further waves of catastrophe shatter the City. Elsa Johnson is crushed to death by a falling wall while Vera and Piper escape encroaching fires. The narration includes intricate details of how Vera and Piper survive those next few harrowing days. The City’s infrastructure has been decimated. Gas and electric lines are broken, water cisterns are cracked, and fires threaten almost every City block. A parade of evacuees flees from downtown to the western part of the City, where refugee camps are eventually established at Golden Gate Park, the Presidio and Lafayette Square. San Francisco looks like a war zone.
Vera eventually rescues her biological mother, Rose, under a pile of rubble in her Barbary Coast bordello and arranges for her to be transported to a hospital. Soon Vera is taking care of Rose while trying to understand her enigmatic and remote mother. Vera grows up quickly and joins forces with one of her mother’s loyal employees, a Chinese man named Tan. Like the City, Vera is determined and tenacious to move forward. As San Franciscans abandon social norms to focus on survival, Vera begins to imagine a different life for herself. She encounters looters and luminaries, heroes and hucksters as she learns to navigate this troubled world. With ease, Edgarian weaves historical characters into the story. Earlier in 1906, San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz had been facing charges of bribery and extortion. Due to the upheaval, the indictment is delayed. Vera and Piper are friends with the Mayor’s daughter, and thus, readers are given a more personal perspective of this famous scandal.
Vera’s coming-of-age story was less compelling to this reader than the historical narrative. I struggled with Vera’s voice when her interactions with adults seemed implausible. Nonetheless, in terms of historical fiction, Edgarian succeeds. Her meticulous research is impressive. She includes countless facts, both large and small, about the quake’s effects on the City’s political, military, architectural and financial life.
In 1989 San Francisco suffered another tragic tremor. Both ’06 and ’89 were seismic events that linger in the foggy mist of the City’s collective memory. A wary acceptance of the possibility of another quake remains part of San Francisco’s ethos. ‘Vera’ is a reverent ode to the resiliency of San Francisco and her people. If you wonder what it might have felt like to be in the 1906 earthquake, ‘Vera’ is a great place to start.
