A Place for Us: A Novel
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD “5 UNDER 35” NOMINEE • NEW YORK’S “ONE BOOK, ONE NEW YORK” PICK
Named One of the Best Books of the Year: Washington Post • NPR • People • Refinery29 • Parade • BuzzFeed
“Mirza writes with a mercy that encompasses all things.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post
Hailed as “a book for our times” (Christiane Amanpour), A Place for Us is a deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging.
As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia: their headstrong, eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride. What secrets and betrayals have caused this close-knit family to fracture? Can Amar find his way back to the people who know and love him best?
A Place for Us takes us back to the beginning of this family’s life: from the bonds that bring them together, to the differences that pull them apart. All the joy and struggle of family life is here, from Rafiq and Layla’s own arrival in America from India, to the years in which their children—each in their own way—tread between two cultures, seeking to find their place in the world, as well as a path home.
A Place for Us is a book for our times: an astonishingly tender-hearted novel of identity and belonging, and a resonant portrait of what it means to be an American family today. It announces Fatima Farheen Mirza as a major new literary talent.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year: Washington Post • NPR • People • Refinery29 • Parade • BuzzFeed
“Mirza writes with a mercy that encompasses all things.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post
Hailed as “a book for our times” (Christiane Amanpour), A Place for Us is a deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging.
As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia: their headstrong, eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride. What secrets and betrayals have caused this close-knit family to fracture? Can Amar find his way back to the people who know and love him best?
A Place for Us takes us back to the beginning of this family’s life: from the bonds that bring them together, to the differences that pull them apart. All the joy and struggle of family life is here, from Rafiq and Layla’s own arrival in America from India, to the years in which their children—each in their own way—tread between two cultures, seeking to find their place in the world, as well as a path home.
A Place for Us is a book for our times: an astonishingly tender-hearted novel of identity and belonging, and a resonant portrait of what it means to be an American family today. It announces Fatima Farheen Mirza as a major new literary talent.
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Readers say *A Place for Us* beautifully explores an Indian-American Muslim family's struggles with faith, identity, and belonging through nuanced, lo...
ARC from First To Read, Penguin. I now own the book, too. This book is a wonderfully written story of a Muslim Indian American family. Tradition, discipline, betrayal on many levels, heartbreak, forbidden love, familial love, excruciating loss, hope, hope, hope. The last bit of Part 3 and all of Part 4 made me weep. Such a great book. I can’t wait to read more from Fatima Farheen Mirza.
thenextgoodbook.com
A Place For Us by Fatima Farheer Mirza
382 pages
What’s it about?
This book opens at a family wedding in California. Hadia is getting married in a traditional Indian- Muslim ceremony. Hadia’s mother, father, younger sister-Huda, and younger brother-Amar are all in attendance. As the story opens you realize that for an unknown reason Amar is estranged from the family. The rest of the novel goes back and forth in time and viewpoints to explain Amar’s place in the family.
What did it make me think about?
This book captures the complexity of family relationships. It made me think of how we all see shared experiences so very differently. This story emphasizes how our age, our generation, and our life experiences influence those viewpoints. What grandparent can't understand this quote- “ A young child was asleep on her father’s shoulder, her little feet bare, her mother following with her shoes hooked on curled fingers. They had their whole lives ahead of them: they moved through the world where anything was possible and did not even know to be grateful for it. "
Should I read it?
So this book has gotten a lot of hype because it is the first book from Sarah Jessica Parker’s line for Hogarth. Such a shame as all the hype should be about this amazing new writer. I thought this book was a treasure. I wanted to slow down and just savor the last fifty pages. One of my favorite books I have read in years! Don’t miss the one.
Quote-couldn't choose just one!
“She knows her father. His pride, his values, his adherence to religious rules. They are more important than love. More important than loyalty to one’s child. She always sensed conditions to their parents’ love so she did nothing to threaten it. Amar senses the same and only thought to test its limits. See how far he could push them before they left him.”
“We pray together and when it is time for us to ask our hearts desire, my first wish is that he remain steadfast in faith, and then, if he does not, that he never believe that God is a being with a heart like a human’s, capable of being small and vindictive.”
If you liked this try-
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
A Place For Us by Fatima Farheer Mirza
382 pages
What’s it about?
This book opens at a family wedding in California. Hadia is getting married in a traditional Indian- Muslim ceremony. Hadia’s mother, father, younger sister-Huda, and younger brother-Amar are all in attendance. As the story opens you realize that for an unknown reason Amar is estranged from the family. The rest of the novel goes back and forth in time and viewpoints to explain Amar’s place in the family.
What did it make me think about?
This book captures the complexity of family relationships. It made me think of how we all see shared experiences so very differently. This story emphasizes how our age, our generation, and our life experiences influence those viewpoints. What grandparent can't understand this quote- “ A young child was asleep on her father’s shoulder, her little feet bare, her mother following with her shoes hooked on curled fingers. They had their whole lives ahead of them: they moved through the world where anything was possible and did not even know to be grateful for it. "
Should I read it?
So this book has gotten a lot of hype because it is the first book from Sarah Jessica Parker’s line for Hogarth. Such a shame as all the hype should be about this amazing new writer. I thought this book was a treasure. I wanted to slow down and just savor the last fifty pages. One of my favorite books I have read in years! Don’t miss the one.
Quote-couldn't choose just one!
“She knows her father. His pride, his values, his adherence to religious rules. They are more important than love. More important than loyalty to one’s child. She always sensed conditions to their parents’ love so she did nothing to threaten it. Amar senses the same and only thought to test its limits. See how far he could push them before they left him.”
“We pray together and when it is time for us to ask our hearts desire, my first wish is that he remain steadfast in faith, and then, if he does not, that he never believe that God is a being with a heart like a human’s, capable of being small and vindictive.”
If you liked this try-
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
This is a well-written story that follows an Indian-American Muslim family through their struggles with faith, identity, and belonging. This author has a beautiful way of writing about family dynamics, loving connections, and raw emotions. She has a talent for highlighting the vast nuance of heavy family conflict, as these situations are never just black & white.
This book spends a lot of time exploring the impact of a childhood spent stewing in the guilt and shame caused by the pressure of very strict expectations. It made me think a lot about parenting in a way that provides guidance without being an overbearing presence that dims a child's individuality. What a complicated topic! We're all just trying our best, and our good intentions have to mean something in the end. I don't often cry from books, but this one made me weep.
This book spends a lot of time exploring the impact of a childhood spent stewing in the guilt and shame caused by the pressure of very strict expectations. It made me think a lot about parenting in a way that provides guidance without being an overbearing presence that dims a child's individuality. What a complicated topic! We're all just trying our best, and our good intentions have to mean something in the end. I don't often cry from books, but this one made me weep.
There’s a lot of narration and telling of what the character is like without actually seeing it in the characters. There’s more tell than show, if this were a show & tell. Growing up I personally knew many people like the characters in this story, especially boys like Amar, but those people also existed outside of their trauma. And a lot of them grew out of it. I didn’t understand how Amar was described as amazing yet so traumatized that he couldn’t just move out and live his own life while still being a part of his family at an arms length.  I’ve seen a lot worse families than these. It’s not like Amar’s parents abused him. How his mom coddles him and spoils him as he’s growing up, but then tries to control who he ends up with is pretty typical of immigrant Indian moms of that generation. Amar’s parents had expectations he didn’t agree with. I found the book to be a bit boring. The going back-and-forth in time flashbacks are not as smooth as they could’ve been written. 
I really enjoyed this book,and the complexity of th characters, as well as reading from different POVs. I'm a second generation Indian, so a lot of the book resonated with my own life experiences; something that I don't often get to see in literature. I was impressed with SJP for picking such a diverse book. I really liked the way the author wrote; it was so well written, and I felt like I was each character as we switched points of view.
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