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.
Zaher seems to be saying that in a society as unjust as this one, even acts of morality are tarnished with grime. As with the coin lodged in the narrator’s back—a smart metaphor for inherited trauma and the currency of power—no matter how hard you scrub, you can never get clean.
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.
