Immigrating alone from Paris to New York after the crucible of World War II, Gazala Benamar, still a teenager, becomes fast friends with two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala's lost, beloved brother Samir finally joins her in Manhattan, this contentious, inseparable foursome will last into the twenty-first century, becoming the beating heart of a multigenerational found family. These decades are marked by the business of everyday life and the inevitable surprises of erupting passions and great and small waves of joy and despair, from the beginning of life to its end. Gazala and Samir make a home together, Alma loses a baby, Anne leaves her husband for his sister, and Anne's restless daughter grows up to raise a child on her own and join a throuple, becoming who she wanted to be. Through it all, and the history of these decades, the four friends, and their best beloveds, stand by one another—protecting, annoying, and celebrating each other.
Exquisite ... These transitions, while initially dizzying, coalesce into a rhythm that feels fresh and exciting. Together they suggest that memory conflates the past, present and future, until at the end, our lives can be viewed as a richly textured tapestry of experience and recollection, threaded together by the people we’ve loved ... Her prose is so finely wrought it shimmers. Again and again she has returned to love as her primary subject, each time finding new depth and dimension, requiring us to put aside our expectations and go where the pages take us. As readers, we’re in the most adept of hands.
Short in length but contains multitudes. A multi-generational novel of family, war, immigration, love, and loss, the book is full to bursting with characters, settings, perspectives, time periods, insights, and aperçus. This multifarious abundance is both the novel’s strength and its weakness ... Irresistible voice ... While sections of the book enchant, moments and lines provoke laughter, knowing nods, or a delighted smile, the overall effect deflates our hopes. I’ll Be Right Here reads more like a collection of vivid sketches, haphazardly bundled, than a finely wrought and fully realized novel. The parts are greater than the whole, the ingredients tastier than the dish.
In such small, wryly observed indignities that one feels most sure in Bloom county ... Will not be for everyone. Then again, it won’t weigh down the terry tote.
