DesiLit Daily

With Laila’s arrival, it appears that Yasmeen’s past life and her ghosts have been brought out for discussion from wherever she had tried to bury them for the 18 years she lived in USA. It is really quite curious how Yasmeen had supposedly divided her lives in each country so completely. The entire novel oscillates between Yasmeen’s childhood up to the point of her twin’s death, and the present. The plot is essentially about her effort to reconcile the past with the present, curiously negating her years in the USA, which are little discussed at all, and which seem not to have impacted on or influenced the things which are genuinely important to her. The plot moves from Houston to Pakistan, where Yasmeen goes with her children, to try to reconcile herself with her past.

The backbone of the story appears to be that something unsavory which Laila has done in her life, which has deeply impacted upon Yasmeen and the decisions and choices she subsequently makes. It is a also a curious assumption on which the novel lies, that Yasmeen would be so influenced, to the point of being controlled, by a secret in her mother’s past.

Sarwar tries to set up the idea that her characters are storytellers, Laila, Yasmeen, other characters in their family, and even shows the children learning to tell stories too. In this, there are echoes of Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron, or Kartography, where the protagonists and even more minor characters are innate storytellers, and able to almost create and recreate realities as they spin their stories. This also appears to be Sarwar’s intention. But unlike Shamsie’s characters. Sarwar’s characters unfortunately are rather poor storytellers. Their use of language is dull and unremarkable, the stories are not riveting as they are intended to be, just somewhat unsatisfactory and largely uninteresting. The stories told by the characters are meant to recreate the past for the readers in a lively manner, and the idea is a good one, but the execution is rather lacking, and consequently, all the stories seem to consist of rather unimportant things happening to uninteresting characters.

And like her characters, Sarwar herself is no gifted storyteller, her story eventually emerges rather flat, and her characters rather two-dimensional. The most unconvincing of the characters is Carlos, apparently Yasmeen’s lover in Houston, but a character who seems to have been created without much reason or purpose, and who indeed serves only the purpose to demonstrate how insignificant even a lover is in Yasmeen’s life in USA, compared to how involved she is with the things which happened in Pakistan, even if they happened so long ago.

The best of Sarwar’s characters is the dead Yasir, Yasmeen’s twin. Yasir is the most likable and appealing character in the novel, and although long dead, seems to be more alive and three-dimensional than all the other characters and narrators of the novel. “Without Yasir there was no magic in my [Yasmeen’s] life.” Regretfully, this seems all too true, and indeed, Yasmeen’s tale was quite bereft of magic for the reader.

Sarwar makes attempts to weave some magical realism into the stories, into the lives of her characters, but this too falls rather flat. She also attempts some drama (or melodrama?) in bringing characters into apparently life-threatening situations, and while she is not overly histrionic, the plot remains rather unconvincing. Because the protagonist is not a particularly sympathetic or appealing character, the reader is left feeling rather polite towards her, but never warm.

Sarwar’s characters and the novel never quite manage to ignite much interest or evoke excitement and involvement. It is not a novel one would dislike or a novel which is difficult to read, but neither is it one which yields much interest or enjoyment. It is a reasonable read, but is unlikely to shine when put amongst the likes of Nadeem Aslam, Kamila Shamsie, Usma Aslam Khan, Mohsin Hamid.