Reviewer Caryl Worden:
From as early as she can remember, Caryl has had her nose in a book.
Even as a teenager, there's no where she'd rather be than browsing
the shelves in libraries and book stores. Which explains why her
career centred around words. After almost 30 years as a journalist
and magazine editor, Caryl recently shifted vocations and now
explores writing short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. You
can read some of her work at http://www.carylworden55.blogspot.com. (Please note that unfortunately Caryl recently passed away).
Author: Saadia Ahmed
Digital (e-Book) Publisher: Saadia Ahmed
e-ISBN: 978-0-615-44605-9
Click Here To Purchase The First
Author: Saadia Ahmed
Digital (e-Book) Publisher:
Saadia Ahmed
e-ISBN: 978-0-615-44605-9
I'm sad to say this book disappointd me. The
premise presented was of two young East Asian women grappling with
clashes in the traditional ways of their parents and their own
adoption of modern American culture, especially when it comes to
love, marriage and family. Very intriguing, I thought.
Plus
author Saadia Ahmed's background lends itself to the tale. She was
born in Pakistan but moved with her family to the U.S. when she was
19. She works as a corporate accountant, the same career she chose
for her main character.
Unfortunately Ahmed merely skims the
surface, in the first half of of the book especially. I wondered if
this was meant for a Young Adult audience, which may be more
appropriate, except that the main characters are graduating college
not high school.
The story is ninety per cent dialogue, which
in one way focuses it nicely in a direct face-to-face fashion, but
doesn't allow for context. Ahmed tells, instead of showing. The
conversations sound accurately like today's pre-teens chattering on
their mobiles, and they are done in a staccato way; changing sentence
length would offer more range of emotion. The conflict within the
main character, Reena, is portrayed in a surface way, but the author
doen't reveal any internal dialogue to reveal if Reena is aware of it
at all.
There is also a lot of repetition of themes: Mom
and daughter's arguments, best friend Sofia's constant words of
warning and their obvious foreshadowings, and Reena's assertion of
being a "modern Persian woman" yet who is obsessed with
what a man will think of her, and his looks and success. I lost track
of how many times Reena comments on how handsome boyfriend Brian
is.
However as the story progresses through the girls'
marriages and break ups, the tone also becomes more mature; narrative
expands, characters deepen some.
With a thorough edit and
re-write paying particular attention to some mechanics and the
emotional arc, I believe this book still has solid potential. There
are some conflicts from a 1950s mindset that beg exploring: women's
disempowerment; "whites versus browns"; self image; and
cultural differences in sexual expectations. The original idea of
"The First" stands, and that, after all else, is what
builds the story.