May 25, 2009
In this captivating debut, Yunis takes readers on a magic carpet ride examining the lives of Fatima Abdullah and her huge dysfunctional family. Imitating Scheherazade, Fatima—in a clever twist—spins her own tales to the legendary storyteller. And she has plenty of material: Fatima is dying, and more interested in her prized possessions—including a house in Lebanon—than in reuniting her splintered offspring and her estranged husband, Ibraham, whose enduring love is proved in a neat twist at the end of the novel. Fatima's family is all over the country, all with issues, including daughter Laila battling breast cancer in Detroit, openly gay actor grandson Amir in Los Angeles and pregnant great-granddaughter Aisha in Minneapolis. Gradually, Fatima learns that her true treasure isn't the house in Lebanon that she's pined after for decades, but her imperfect, loving family. Add in a bumbling neophyte FBI agent seeing al-Qaeda smoke where there is no fire and the result is a sometimes serious, sometimes funny, but always touching tale of a Middle Eastern family putting down deep roots on U.S. soil.
Starred review from June 15, 2009
Yunis' book club–ready debut uses The Arabian Nights as a departure point for an immigrant-assimilation story.
The central character, around whom a cast of dozens revolves like a time piece, is Fatima Abdullah: purple-haired mother, grandmother and Lebanese migrant who settled in Detroit in the 1930s. The book opens, however, with an older Fatima in contemporary West Hollywood; the conservative but flexible matron moved there 992 nights ago to live with her gay grandson Amir. On that first night, she had a visit from none other than Scheherazade herself. The Arab beauty with 1,001 tales demanded stories from Fatima's past, and when asked"What if I don't tell you a story?" she replied,"When our tales are over, so are our lives." Now Fatima is counting down to night No. 1,001, believing it will bring her death at the age of 85. Yunis' gifted handling of character and environment forestalls the question of whether Fatima is insane or gifted with magical thinking as she debates and ruminates with Scheherazade about life, family and America. The only relative willing to tolerate her unintentionally hilarious outbursts is Amir, an aspiring actor struggling against typecasting as a terrorist (his dream role is the lead in an Omar Sharif biopic). He's bitter over his breakup with a sexy soap-opera star—whose driveway, we learn, has been conscripted for spying purposes by the FBI, which has mistaken the Abdullahs' family dramas for national-security concerns. Yunis cleverly weaves a vast social web containing Fatima's ten offspring, beginning each vignette with the matriarch's musings about her kids, which lead Scheherazade to fly around America eavesdropping on the wildly diverse clan. Readers may occasionally get lost in the rain of names and details, but the characters' grounded humanity and emotional clarity always provide orientation.
Emotionally rewarding reading that builds to a poignant and thoroughly satisfying climax.
(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
June 1, 2009
Fatima Abdullah is 85 and expects to depart this life soon. In fact, she thinks it will be after she has her last nightly visit from Scheherazade, the legendary storyteller from "The Arabian Nights". Fatima has been telling her stories to her nightly visitor for 992 nights now, so there's just a few more to go. Fatima herself is not at a loss for stories since she immigrated to Detroit from a village in Lebanon when she was 15, married twice and raised ten children, all but one of whom have left Detroit. Her children and grandchildren live all over the place, and the stories bounce from Los Angeles to Houston to Minneapolis to Beirut and back to Detroit again. VERDICT This first novel by a journalist and filmmaker with Middle Eastern roots is a warm, feel-good story of complicated family ties, long-buried secrets, and last-minute surprises. It gives insight into the lives of Lebanese immigrants in America and would be a good selection for book clubs. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 3/15/09.]Leslie Patterson, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, RI
Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2009
Living with her grandson Amir in Los Angeles, Lebanese matriarch Fatima believes her life is almost up: each night she is visited by the legendary (and immortal) Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights, and, in a novel reversal, it is Fatima who tells Scheherazade stories of her life over the course of 1,001 nights. The book opens with night 992, just 10 short days before Fatimas death, and the woman finally starts sharing stories not just about her beloved house in Lebanon but also about her 10 children and two former husbands. Fatima is preoccupied with several things: finding a wife for the openly gay Amir, deciding which of her heirs should inherit her house in Lebanon, and getting Scheherazade to tell her exactly how shes going to die. Just when Fatima is certain life can offer her no more surprises, a letter arrives from a great-granddaughter she never knew existed. Celebrating the rich diversity of a multigenerational family, Yunis debut is a magical, whimsical read with plenty of humor and heart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)