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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Mar 2006, 272 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2007, 272 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket: Isolated and far
from his native Iran, Ushman Khan has worked hard to build a
wealthy, reliable clientele for his wares: exquisite hand-woven
rugs from his home city of Tabriz. With perfect rectitude, he
caters to clients like New York’s Upper East Side grand dame
Mrs. Roberts, who plies him for stories about his exotic origins
and culture to feed her own imagination. But like many
immigrants, he’s living only half a life. He dreams of the day
his beloved wife, Farak, will be able to join him in New York
and complete his vision of the American dream. But when she
tells him that she is leaving him for another man, Ushman is
shattered. He begins to wander aimlessly through the terminals
of JFK Airport, imagining a now-impossible reunion with Farak.
Unexpectedly, he meets Stella, a Barnard College student who has
just bade farewell to her parents en route for an Italian
vacation. After Stella, isolated in her own way, finds herself
at Ushman’s Manhattan store, they embark on an improbable and
powerful romance. Together this American girl from the Deep
South and the Iranian aesthete form a tender bond that awakens
them both to the possibility of joy in a world full of tragedy.
Comment: At first glance a romance between an
Iranian immigrant and an American college student almost half
his age might lead the reader to expect shades of Lolita
- but that is far from the case. What
Mullins offers in her low key first novel is a lovely,
melancholy story about shaking free from disappointment and
finding connection and acceptance in whatever form they appear.
When asked how she was able to capture the essence of
Ushman's character so well Mullins replies, "The beauty of
humanity is that none of us is so very different at our core. As
I was writing about Ushman, I never felt he was unlike me. I
certainly have a great respect for the vast differences in our
cultures and our backgrounds, even our genders, but I loved
discovering similarities, too. Love and pain, loneliness and
desire are universal experiences and we are all linked by them.
Stories that I admire are usually those that remind me of the
power of empathy, the natural human ability to feel deep emotion
for those outside of ourselves."
She says she chose to set the book pre-9/11 (in the winter
of 1999 to be exact) "simply so that there would not be a
greater temptation to make assumptions about an entire people or
culture based on one man's story."
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in April 2006, and has been updated for the
June 2007 edition.
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