Home Fire

I thought for a long time about what to rate this book, and I landed on two stars.

There are a lot of things that this book does not do well. One of these things is representation. The women in the novel are treated as sexual beings and are seen as such by every male character. Even worse, they are "exotic" sexual beings that the men in the novel are entranced by because of their "otherness". Orientalism at its finest. Additionally, though I am not a Muslim so it may not be my place to speak (and please tell me I am speaking out of turn!), I found all of the sex scenes and comments regarding the hijab uncomfortable, unnecessary, and disrespectful. Why was it necessary to have the female character praying naked? To have a sex scene where she wears nothing but a hijab? To have a father ask his son, "How Muslim is she?" It added nothing to the plot or characters and Islam seemed to be treated as an accessory to the characters to make them seem deeper than they are, when it is not being denied as a faith by every male character in the book.

The older sister is boring, the younger sister is a manic pixie dream girl, and the men are every stereotype personified. Besides none of the characters being likable, the writing also tries to be very lyrical, but comes off as confusing. There are many tense changes and fragmented sentences. The paragraphs also change content very quickly in some cases and it is hard to keep track of what the characters are actually doing and saying and where they are.

Despite all of this, the book did stick with me. I thought about the ending for quite a while after I finished it and I still managed to have some sort of feelings regarding some of the characters. I can also appreciate what this book was trying to do regarding Islamophobia and double consciousness, even if I do no think it was done well, so I feel it would be a disservice to rate it as low as one star.

I did not expect to like this book. The library had it in the romance section, which is never a genre I read voluntarily. There is a love story, but it's secondary to the political climate surrounding a Muslim family with a complex and traumatic history. While one section in particular drags, I especially liked the second half and the end.

If you want to be mad when a book ends, read this book. I’m not mad that it ended, I’m mad at myself for expecting a happy ending.