Welcome to Litsy!

I‘m forever looking for books featuring lifelong female friendships that speak to me the way Elena Ferrante‘s books do. This comes close.

Loved it !! Learned so much !

I enjoyed the first few chapters of this collection of short stories loosely linked by the character of the book‘s title. From about halfway, the book feels like it‘s lost its way a bit - which in a way reflects the loss of a way of life due to “progress”, but always makes for a less interesting read.

Meanwhile, the feminist in me is grateful she doesn‘t live in a culture that doesn‘t treat women as chattels.

I know of KA primarily as a poet: always creative, always interesting, sometimes very moving, sometimes just plain baffling. This book was all of those things by turn. Or all at once.
Cyrus is colossally self-absorbed, but is aware of the fact. I wanted good things to happen for him.
Structurally, I'm not entirely convinced it worked, but KA makes for a dazzling, rhapsodic novelist. I enjoyed his book very much.

I‘m going to be thinking about this one because there is a lot to chew on.

Is this a perfect novel? Nope, in fact there are elements I don‘t appreciate and frankly I‘ve read better debut novels. However Kaveh has a very distinctive creative voice that isn‘t forgettable. This won‘t be a spine on the shelf I‘ll wonder whether I‘ve read.

Matchy today! 🙃 Loving this novel, so witty & insightful. Perhaps a bit self indulgent, but forgivable.

Guffawing at the wholly pathological superficial “politeness” of Midwesterners, which apparently is akin to Iranian etiquette, and describing his rich girlfriend as “American Christian, the kind that believed Jesus had just needed a bigger gun.”

"I just think about that a lot. The ugliness of anger. I don't disagree that it can be harnessed. But it's so irredeemably ugly."

"You're a human being, Cyrus," Sang said, gently. "So was your mother. So am I. Not cartoon characters. There's no pressure for us to be ethically pure, noble. Or, God forbid, aspirational. We're people. We get mad, we get cowardly. Ugly. We self-obsess."

I‘m happy to be sent to my room. 😊

"Can you imagine just losing access to all the art that you most loved, to all the stuff that gave your living purpose? Purpose and fluency? ..... "Imagine all that stuff disappearing," Kareem continued "Literally going up in smoke...."

"Then imagine," Kareem said, "that a bunch of people who'd never met you, for whom you're just a myth, began sending you the art you loved.... Imagine how that might contribute to your sense of amongness.

Addiction is an old country song: you lose the dog, lose the truck, lose the high school sweetheart.

In recovery you play the song backward, and that's where things get interesting. Where'd you find the truck? Did the dog remember you? What'd your sweetheart say when they saw you again