I really enjoyed this book, and I especially liked the author’s next-level writing style, which almost seemed itself musical with parts of the book that were smooth and easy, rising into crescendos that pushed David and Ameena’s relationship almost to its limits.
Ameena, a Pakistani-Muslim writer by day and artist by night, left her home in Manchester for New York to avoid being forced into an arranged marriage by her very conservative and religious parents. David, an American-Jewish advertising strategist by day and jazz musician by night, is an orphan who is still mourning losing his mother. While their religious backgrounds are highlighted, both claim to not be religious. At the beginning of the book, there is an elevated meet-cute across a New York subway train car between David and Ameena, after they witness a performance they both find deeply beautiful. And while their relationship starts out passionately and grows and deepens as they support each other’s artistic pursuits, they also find themselves fiercely at odds when their religious and political differences eventually become more apparent.
I’ll start by saying that the author starts off by telling the reader that she based part of the character of David after jazz musician Aaron Goldberg, so I really enjoyed setting the mood for this book by enjoying reading it while listening to Aaron Goldberg’s music. If you enjoy jazz, check out Aaron Goldberg’s albums (and his story – I found his biography very interesting.)
Overall, this was such a complicated book, and I feel like so much could be said, but I don’t want this review to be longer than the book, so I’m going to focus this review on just a small part of it.
While we don’t know exactly how old these characters are when their relationship begins, I felt like they were in their mid-twenties, an age when anything is possible, the world can still be conquered, and while your dreams might be defined, your path is not. And they (especially Ameena) haven’t experienced quite enough to see anything but a world where everything is clearly defined by black-and-white, good-and-bad, right-and-wrong. And this is especially true of their relationship as it becomes defined.
Everyone brings baggage to a relationship, but few talk about it like Ami Rao does, and I loved how she incorporated the difficult experiences that David and Ameena both carried into this relationship. I loved how real some of their fights were. How she incorporated the ugly, almost unforgiveable, things they said to each other in heat of the moment. And then how everything was continually swept under the rug and they moved on. While perhaps not the healthiest relationship, it definitely ebbed and flowed, which felt so much more realistic than how most books handle romantic relationships.
Overall, I felt like this was a special book with a new voice, very different from anything else out there right now.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and Fairlight Books in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.