March 1, 2023
Pakistan-born Alam revisits the horrors of Partition as she introduces us to Rozeena, thinking back on its consequences as she struggles to keep herself and her parents safe in 1960s Karachi even as her childhood friendships begin to crumble. Decades later, a request to watch after a friend's teenage daughter brings back the past. Part of a surge of new books, fiction and nonfiction, addressing the Partition. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2023
Women's choices, shaped by history, desire, and obligation, drive a debut novel set against the backdrop of Pakistan's violent past. Dilemmas abound in both the "Then, 1964" and "Now, 2019" interleaved timestreams of Alam's novel, set in Karachi and focused on a group of four friends, three of them refugees who arrived after the brutal Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Son of a wealthy business family, Haaris is the only one who always lived in the city, while Rozeena, Aalya, and Zohair endured the shock and pain of the transition, Rozeena losing her brother, who died saving her from the mob. Aalya and Zohair are attracted to each other, but the secrets of Aalya's past oblige her to marry someone with better prospects. Rozeena and Haaris have feelings for each other, too, but also face impediments. Rozeena's uncle wants to force her into an arranged marriage, but as a qualified pediatrician, she wants to support herself and her widowed mother. Women's self-determination in a traditional, class-bound, sometimes corrupt society is a strong theme of the book, reflected in the problems and options of several female characters, Rozeena in particular. Circumscribed by loyalty, financial needs, guilt, and a wish for freedom, she makes choices on the night of and also after Haaris' Welcome Home Ball that will determine several outcomes and reach decades into the future. Serious in tone, slow to start, and increasingly forced in its plotting, the novel works hard to deliver sympathy and suspense. Its warm evocation of place is a strength, but the sense of authorial machinery at work as the characters repeatedly face intractable options handicaps this first work. A vibrant portrait of a place and time lends richness to an overdetermined storyline.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
August 1, 2023
This sensitive tale of reconstructed lives and reexamined choices goes back and forth in time between post-Partition Karachi and 2019. Through the story of Rozeena, whose family experienced the traumatic move to Pakistan, it delivers a sense of the social and cultural dynamics of a country in transition. In 1964, Rozeena's friendships with Haaris (also a romantic interest), Aalya, and Zohair begin to fracture due to differences between their families' social status. As these relationships determine Rozeena's choices in unpredictable ways, Alam shows the impact of established social hierarchies and the price individuals have to pay to navigate these structures. In 2019, Rozeena looks back over her successful career as a doctor and bonds with Haaris' granddaughter, examining the choices she made as a young person under tremendous emotional stress. The delicate balance between individual and collective imperatives runs through this plot, as do themes of friendship, ambition, gender norms, class, and familial pressures. Alam's vivid descriptions of Karachi, nuanced characters, and deft ability to delve into big ideas while keeping the story moving make this an emotionally engaging read.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
August 14, 2023
In Alam’s shaky debut, four friends must face the devastating repercussions of a life-changing event in post-Partition Karachi, Pakistan. In the present day, Rozeena, a retired pediatrician, reluctantly agrees to allow the granddaughter of Haaris, a man she used to be in love with and has not seen for decades, to be her gardener. Her history with Haaris is revealed in a secondary timeline, in the mid-1960s, when Rozeena, Haaris, and their friends Aalya and Zohair attend Haaris’s welcome home ball upon his return from studying in Liverpool. Aalya, secretly from a family of servants who was bequeathed their employer’s home in a wealthy neighborhood, has feelings for Zohair, who unknowingly played a role in Rozeena’s brother’s death during the violence of Partition when India’s independence split the country in two. Aalya, though, knows she needs to find a wealthier husband to keep her family’s secret safe. A divorced stranger takes liberties with Aalya at the ball, setting off a series of shocking events that change the friends’ lives forever. Rozeena, meanwhile, strives to establish her pediatric practice and keep her widowed mother from selling their dilapidated family home. The story expends too much energy on the welcome home ball, leaving little room for character development outside of that night’s events. This underperforms. Agent: Giles Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary.