Book Review of Rajia Hassib's "A Pure Heart"

LEGAL DISCLOSURE: I was given an advance reader's copy from which to write this review. I was not paid.

Rajia Hassib, A Pure Heart (Viking, 2019) 305 pages, fiction, $17.40 USD. On Amazon.


Some stories are not really about the character who seems the central one. For instance, Arthur Miller's The Crucible isn't so much about John Proctor or Abigail Williams as it is about Elizabeth Proctor. Rajia Hassib's A Pure Heart is similar. It isn't so much about Rose and her family dealing with the grief of losing Gameela to a terrorist attack as it is about Gameela. Gameela, the Pure Heart.

But what is more important than individual characters in this book is what Hassib does best: nuances.
The development and exploration of all the characters are superb. Among the subtleties addressed include differing cultures, differing belief systems, differing places, differing feelings, and differing modes of expression. She even explores how differences can exist in the same person at the same time. Hassib is a master of empathy.

Even the suicide bomber receives this treatment. His story is given in full - his is a full-fledged, complicated, and even relatable personality. If all of us were willing to look at everyone around us with similar context and empathy, violence would cease to exist.

Go read this book and make it part of who you are.

Review: "In the Language of Miracles" by Rajia Hassib

Rajia Hassib, In the Language of Miracles, (Viking, 2015), 288 pages, fiction, $19.60 U.S.

Most of the reviews for this book talk about how this very domestic story mirrors the Muslim experience in America since 9/11. No doubt it does. But being someone who has experienced personal and family trauma, I read it less as a socio-political parable and more as the domestic microcosm of one family's troubles that it ultimately is.

The story begins one year after the family's eldest son kills his ex-girlfriend and then commits suicide. The pain is potent and real throughout this novel. Each character is struggling to cope with that horrific event and the ostracism that resulted from it in a different way according to each personality. The father throws himself into work, and being overly concerned with reputation, into somehow convincing the community to accept them again. The mother spends her days in the attic where she can still smell her lost son. The grandmother flies in from Egypt and takes over care of the household and the remaining children, trying desperately to protect them with superstitious rituals and other cultural customs.The daughter spends most of her time at another's house and immerses herself in her faith. The surviving son, who is the focus of the novel, attempts to erase his identity as much as possible and experiences a crisis of faith.

The most memorable chapter describes the mother's effort to get rid of her dead son's effects in the attic. It so perfectly parallels the actual experience of losing a child that the emotion smothered me, as it should. The climax of the story - at a memorial service held for the ex-girlfriend by her family - is chaotic and comical after all the weight of grief in the rest of the novel. Personally, the son's involvement in the scene read as out of place even though it was supposed to be his moment of clarity at last. I couldn't help but think that, instead of saving his family from embarrassment, he added to it. But perhaps that is secondary to his religious epiphany.

This book is a poignant portrait of tragedy and the fallout it leaves behind. The book goes through overwhelming emotional moments and moments of numbness. In the end, just as each family member found his/her own way through the initial shock and pain, they each find their own way to carry on and move forward into a future. It's true that - in an emotional way - one can never go back  home. Things shattered cannot be whole as they once were. But one can make a new home that is just as dear as the original one, albeit different. And the shattered thing can be glued together again. So what if the cracks show? It can still be useful, beautiful, and valued. That is what this family eventually realises.

"In the Language of Miracles" is one of the best novels I've read in the last five years.

You can buy it at Amazon.