PanThe New York Times Book Review... makes ample use of blank space, between paragraphs, strings of thought, scenes and events. When not used, what’s there is jumbled and scattered ... this is what [Myint] achieves in her writing — she keeps herself to herself. In doing so, she makes the question of where she comes from illumined and voluminous ... Myint’s narrative shape is barely there. We get blips and cracks, \'a trace, a strip, or a corner of the memories,\' a \'memory of a memory.\' This family history is often recounted through others, like this: \'My father said my grandmother said\' and \'My other grandmother, my mother’s mother\' and \'My mother said my great-grandmother and great-grandfather.\' This makes the prose clunky and cluttered, and the people difficult to feel and see and hear and remember ... The language is so concerned with being and looking pretty that what the story is about — political upheaval, death, heartbreak, violence, discrimination, the immigrant experience — is barely noticeable. The parents, particularly, don’t feel like real people, since we never get them in their adult mess ... This is a writer who does not know and is comfortable in not knowing. The gaze flinches ... It is one thing to be able to put feelings on paper and another to make a reader feel what we write. The narrow line between being a note taker and being a writer is worth discerning ... These are wonderful observations of language, but the writing does not move them beyond being duly noted. It certainly sounds like poetry, but it is not poetry ... The material Myint has before her is compelling, but they are memories and stories that are not hers. This is the problem for the children of immigrants and refugees when we set out to write memoirs. However special we think our lives are or however much we accomplish, our stories always pale in comparison — even more so when we lean on others’ to write our own. We, whom \'nothing has ever happened to,\' are never as compelling as our parents.
Avni Doshi
RaveThe New York Times Book Review...wonderfully striking, direct and confident, and devilishly funny ... The daughter, whose point of view we follow through the novel, is named Antara. Her mother’s name is Tara. This visual and auditory proximity — one name built from the other — is a lovely example of how Doshi works ... Doshi doesn’t have to write out a scene to convey drama; she can do it with a single word ... Avni Doshi isn’t just a talented writer, she is an artist ... A voice this unadorned, and blunt, is so hauntingly stubborn and original, you want to hear from it again and again.
