A novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.
Sharp and disarming ... [A] wry tone ... Zaher is expert at crisp turns of phrase that reveal how brittle her narrator is ... A sturdy novel about an unsteady person is no small feat, and Zaher’s prose is remarkably controlled.
A spiraling, hallucinogenic plot ... The whiplash feels intentional, funny in an absurdist way ... The novel’s power is not in cohesion, but in chaos — in an ambience that is consistently murky, morally numbed, deceptively blasé. Throughout, her prose manages to be both deadpan and fertile ... Nothing about this book is meant to be subtle, not even its metaphors.
In lyrical and corrosive prose, this exquisite novel probes the space between the tragedy of statelessness and the neurotic glow of affluence, proving that in this overlap lies a rich and bewildering landscape of human behavior. Strange and luminous, it weaves an elegant tapestry from disparate threads, touching on class, fashion, lust, grief, and violence with wit and poise ... Funny, unnerving, and decadent.
