Author: Naheed Phiroze Patel
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 296
How Long It Took Me To Read: 3 days
Plot Summary: Noomi Wadia, a bright, quick-tempered young woman with a penchant for getting into trouble, struggles with the fraught relationship she has with her mother. She grows from a lonely, wild-hearted teenager to a troubled adult who finds love but not happiness. Soon, Noomi realizes that her worst fears have come to pass - she is trapped in the same cycle of self-destructiveness as her mother, and she must battle her impulses or risk losing everything.
Things I Liked:
1. First and foremost I enjoyed the writing, let's just get that out of the way. The writing and the style and voice of the story telling were all enjoyable.
2. I love reading about families. Happy ones are great but man give me a dysfunctional family unit and I'll eat it right up. I don't know why I like dysfunctional families so much? Is it because I grew up in a largely 'normal' family? Do I want to read more stories set in families different from my own? Truth be told, we are products of varying degrees of dysfunction. Some more obvious than others. So stories set up in a family where the dysfunction is glaringly obvious and it's ramifications always manage to pull me in. I was interested in this book from the get go. It sounded like something I would enjoy and I did exactly that.
3. Mother and daughter relationships can be tricky, wonderful and warm at once and complicated and turn into one of the most lasting cruel and twisted relationships that drive you insane. It isn't the most straightforward and one-toned relationships that popular culture sometimes makes it out to be. Mothers in general are often shown as beacons of love and light and virtuous and self-sacrificing beings, which a lot of mothers are. But we also need to talk about and acknowledge mothers on the other end of the spectrum.Ones that are manipulative, cruel, abusive and ones that leave a lasting impression on their children. The family at the heart of this book is an excellent example of this sort of a family.
4. The family in this book- The Wadias- live in a small town and come from an affluent set-up, a family with old money. The social milieu of this book, the small-town swish set was an interesting cosmos to step into. We often read about big cities and the super rich, a very common set-up for books and films. We also, especially in the last few years have seen small-towns brought to life on screen and in books, but most of the time these show the decidedly middle-class or lower-middle class set ups, it was nice to see the rich in small towns as well, because you know they do exist!
5. I adored Noomi's father Jeh. A gentle, kind and warm man whose life wasn't perfect, in fact like most gentle people, he was bullied by those in life and yet he held on to his goodness and was a good and supportive parent to Noomi. He just warmed my heart and even broke it a little bit. The world needs more fathers like him. He is isn't heroic but in his small ways, realistic ways he looks out for his daughter.
6. Noomi isn't perfect. She is perfectly human: flawed, confused, lost, scarred, caught in a cycle of self-destruction and smarting from the wounds of her childhood and those of her teenage years. She's lonely, sad and turning into the person she despises the most in the world. Your heart breaks for her in part and in others you want to leap into the book and shake her and scream at her and urge her to do better. We wish her well and want to see her do better in life and love and overcome her issues. She, becomes a friend, a person who you know can do better and deserves better. She is well-written and really comes alive within these pages.
7. The book takes you on a journey from Noomi's childhood, to her troubled teenage years and right up to her adulthood. We see her ups and downs and the ordinary days of her life, we see her world, her often chaotic world, through her eyes and that gives you a deeper understanding of her life and the issues that plague her and the ones she tries to navigate. It's a deep dive into the psyche of our protagonist and really does a great job of taking us into this world.
8. Noomi's in-laws really, really annoyed me. They are the kind of people that have this antiquated idea of what a daughter-in-law should be and do. They are infuriating but you know what...they are real. We all know people like these, vapid, ordinary people seemingly harmless but toxic people. I know friends who have in-laws like this, and I am sure the part of the book dealing with them will resonate with a lot of people.
Rating: 4/5
I really enjoyed this book. I loved the writing, the honesty and the angst and the truth that so many families grapple with. I did find the second half less intriguing than the first, my interest vaned a little bit but picked right back up. But over all this is a book that lived up to my expectations.
Trigger Warnings for Abuse, Violence, Substance Abuse and Sexual Abuse.
This book was sent to me for review by the publisher, but the views are all mine.
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