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yanaaxmaria's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
This book was compiled of 10 short stories, featuring a cast of predominantly women of Pakistani heritage with careers as writers or journalists. Many of these characters struggled with judgemental and overbearing mothers, patronising and unloving partners, or both.
These stories depict the experience of how constraining family life can be and how it feels to not quite fit into the norms of western culture.
I had first seen this book in July of 2021 and had been waiting to buy it since. I spotted the cover in a bookshop while travelling 2 weeks ago and immediately bought it, and to be honest, I picked it up mostly for the cover. Now, I wish I could have loved the collection as much as I hoped to.
Apart from 2 or 3 stories, I enjoyed this collection of short stories to an extent but I feel they lacked depth.
The writing in this book was simple and often felt like it was written for an English class creative writing task. This could appeal to others, but personally, I just felt like I was reading an assignment. I feel like the writing was able to tell what it needed to tell but it never went beyond that. I couldn’t find many lines or paragraphs that truly stood out to me.
The writing itself also seemed inconsistent. Some stories had a lot of realism while we experienced others that tried to be creepy or like fairytales but fall quite short of being either of those. Some stories, particularly “The Jam Maker”, struck me as random, aiming to be creepy but missing the mark. All in all, the stories didn’t particularly strike me as very original or creative.
The relationships explored in this collection were very repetitive in my opinion and it made me feel like I was reading a different version of the same story each time. Almost all of the daughters were reproachful and had a bad relationship with their mothers, they married bland white men who were wholly unaware of their privilege, and the women themselves were portrayed in a negative light, seeming moody, overly emotional, and petty. The repetitiveness of the stories made me uninterested after the fifth or sixth story. The characters, their backgrounds, the storylines, and pressure points all seemed to reoccur (stressful holidays, relationships becoming intolerable, complicated family lives, etc.).
The snippets we were given into the lives and thoughts of the characters also seemed inconsistent. For some of the short stories, I thought they ended extremely abruptly, leaving me confused and unsatisfied, particularly the second story. Other stories, I felt, dragged on for an unnecessarily long time, leaving me bored and uninterested. Mostly, I felt like they were too short to delve into enough detail to actually provide anything particularly satisfying, and a few felt more like they should be extracts from something longer rather than their own contained stories.
All things considered, I did enjoy the stories but unfortunately, a lot of them just felt a bit flat to me. The majority of my critiques are towards the writing style, the repetitiveness, and the lack of detail. The stories themselves I found interesting, I just personally don’t think Qureshi is the right author for me. I’m sure many other will read this book and be able to appreciate the writing and stories in a way I was unable to, but as of now, this definitely wasn’t a 5 star read for me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Infertility, Miscarriage, Death, Racism, and Death of parent
Minor: Grief
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