Book Review: The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen

Most books about cross-cultural romances focus on the beginning of the relationship, that first, heady rush of longing and adoration that everyone recognizes – but that no couple can ever sustain – coupled with the shared desire to overcome societal obstacles to the liaison. Keija Parssinen’s The Ruins of Us gives us a glimpse of that fairytale 25 years down the road. And it confronts some really interesting questions about the nature of cross-cultural relationships, most importantly, “If we love someone because they are different from us, can love survive after that person makes our culture their own?”

Rosalie was a bartender/singer in Sugar Land, Texas, when she met Abdullah Baylani, a Saudi graduate student from a wealthy family. To Rosalie, whose happiest memories were of her ex-patriot childhood in the Middle East, “Abdi” represents an exotic life she longs to recapture. To Abdullah, she was a breath of fresh air, uninhibited and unconstrained by Saudi culture. But after a quarter century in Saudi Arabia, Rosalie now speaks (almost) fluent Arabic, and her once-red hair is hidden by a veil. She has learned to fit in to survive. But in Abdullah’s eyes, no matter how unfair it is, she’s lost a part of what made her so unique:

Recently she had watched the bright moon of Abdullah’s adoration waning, until it seemed to only reflect light from dying planets – a dull secondhand light. For years they had been a comfort to each other, but somewhere along the way their marriage had grown functional. Now she could only acknowledge that the devotion upon which she had built her world in the farthest province of a desolate land had dissolved under her feet. Kindle location 427

Rosie’s world becomes completely undone when she finds out that her husband has taken another, far younger wife – and kept it from her for more than two years. The revelation is further complicated by her teenage son Faisal’s increasing resentment of the “outsider” status that his “Ameeriki” mother forces on him. She turns to an old college friend, an ex-pat who still works for her husband, for support. But a relationship that would be totally understandable, even innocuous, in Texas, looks way different in the Kingdom.

I found Parssinen’s The Ruins of Us a thought-provoking look at the arc of an intercultural love affair. But the question the reader is left with at the end of the story goes way beyond culture: If you give up everything for someone else, what’s actually left of yourself?

This book is recommended for lovers of contemporary fiction, especially those who enjoy books situated in an international setting. I particularly enjoyed the depiction of family life in Saudi Arabia – Rosie and Abdullah’s blogging, rock and roll loving daughter Mariam gives us about as good a representation of the global teen culture as I’ve seen. It’s a quick read, and perhaps a bit predictable, but well-written and quite enjoyable.

Since Rosie is an immigrant in Saudi Arabia, this is my first book for Colleen's Immigrant Challenge 2012 at Books in the City. I am looking for non-US immigration stories this year, so if you have any ideas, let me know!

I read this book as part of a TLC book tour, and received a copy of the book in return for my honest opinion. For other opinions, check out the links here.

Persepolis: Breaking out of a rut with graphic art

My good friend Jess at Desperado Penguin had a great idea for a reading adventure that became The No Ruts Reading Challenge. Basically, the idea was to read a small number of books in genres and by authors you have never encountered before – or even have existing prejudices against. I had already dedicated this summer to expanding my reading horizons, so I decided to try and fit some of the books from other challenges into No Ruts.

Reaching the Bronze Level of No Ruts proved easy. I read my first-ever Banana Yoshimoto title for Dolce Belleza’s wonderful 4th Japanese Literature Challenge, and listened to my first audio book with Ellie. Silver Level – reading something despite some kind of bad review – seemed wide open. I’m a member of Goodreads, and believe me, for every person that loves a book, there’s someone else who hates it. But in the spirit of the challenge, I was looking for something different from anything I had tried before. When my 16-year-old daughter gave a lukewarm review to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, I knew I had Silver nailed: I had never read a graphic novel.

The Complete Persepolis is a fascinating memoir of the Iranian Revolution – or more correctly, revolutions, since the first one ousted the Shah, and a second brought the Islamic government to power. Marjane is the only daughter of the Satrapi family, a wealthy, well-connected and liberal clan that supports the first revolution. But as Iran moves toward fundamentalism, the family and their close friends feel like unwelcome guests in their own home. Finally, Marjane’s independent, secular attitudes become such a problem for the family – and pose such a danger to herself – that she is shipped off to boarding school in Austria. She eventually returns to Tehran and attends art school, but ultimately she must decide if she can live within the narrow confines of fundamentalist Iranian society.

The book is at turns funny, smart and annoying. The graphic novel format makes great sense here, because Satrapi is an illustrator, and she is more comfortable “speaking” in pictures than in words. In fact, the story is so compelling that I often forgot I was reading a graphic novel. Satrapi does not spare herself from the artist’s critical eye: she allows the reader to experience some difficult and unflattering episodes, a courageous and dangerous path for a memoirist who wants to remain “likeable.” Still, Marjane comes off more strident than heroic at some points. In others, she seems more annoyed that the Islamic Revolution ruined the party for Iran’s elite than concerned about the societal outcomes of regime change. But perhaps that's just the way a young woman would feel about a revolution – I certainly haven’t lived through what Satrapi did.

This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in a social history of the Iranian Revolution, or for anyone trying to dip their toes into the graphic novel genre. Another rut undone. Another reward.

Kabul Beauty School: Cut and Tease

Debbie Rodriguez' Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil is a tough book to review. On the one hand, her experiences are unique -- a hairdresser from Holland, Michigan, who winds up founding the first beauty school to open in Afghanistan after the Taliban were driven out of the capital. On the other hand, it is not a brilliantly written or particularly insightful book.

Fleeing her own abusive husband, Debbie finds purpose in Kabul. Her accounts of her dealings with the byzantine bureaucracy might make for Kafka-esque reading on their own, if the author was better able to contextualize them. Instead, Rodriguez reports them, often dismissing or simply failing to interpret the cultural differences that led to the impasses in the first place.

It's the stories of the women who attend the beauty school that make the book so fascinating -- as daughters of a tribal Islamic society, they occupy a completely different space within the cultural framework than any American woman would, a fact that the author sometimes learns the hard way. However, their stories run together, fueled by one or more antagonists: abusive father, abusive husband, abusive brothers, even abusive sons. The "men" of Afghanistan are one brutish monolith, unless they are lucky enough to be touched in some way by Western culture (cultural hegemony, anyone?). The women are more sympathetic, but often disappoint because of their own cronyism and lack of empathy for each other's plights. The women of Kabul are NOT the Sisterhood of the Traveling Burqua.

Despite this, in the end I felt great compassion for the women of Afghanistan, and that may have been the author's point. But the book reads more like an edited diary than a well-considered memoir, and most of the characters remained unidimensional to the end. Many threads were left unwoven into the final manuscript; new and interesting characters were introduced toward the end, with no resolution. The author's own life remained largely unexamined.

Finally, I couldn't help wondering whether or not the author's frank discussions of some of the personal issues associated with her long-suffering students wouldn't be exacerbated by the book, which made me feel somehow complicit in their suffering. I wound up hoping things were going well for them, but not too optimistic.

Ultimately, I would recommend reading the book, as it does tell a compelling tale. I'd suggest you bring a level of skepticism to the text, however. First book in the What's in a Name 3 Challenge -- a place name -- complete! Next up for me is the musical term, since I've chosen Brad Kessler's Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Cheesemaking.