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audaciaray's review
2.0
First 3/4 of the book were great with compelling characters. Hated the end and the 9/11 tie-in that is foreshadowed throughout.
aleffert's review
4.0
By accident, I read two 9/11 books in a row. This was the second after Pynchon's [b: Bleeding Edge|17208457|Bleeding Edge|Thomas Pynchon|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369067221s/17208457.jpg|23688523]. It's hard to imagine two books with more different takes on a historical event. In Bleeding Edge, 9/11 was just one more particle of cosmic background paranoia that's at the core of all of Pynchon's work. In the Last Illusion, 9/11 is basically the last tock in a clockwork universe.
The Last Illusion, inspired by a Persian folk tale, starts with a boy who is raised as a bird by his mother. He is rescued, and brought to New York where he is raised by a war hearted man/expert on feral children. Zal, the boy, grows up pretty normal, all things considered, which is to say he ends up as a familiar confused teenager type, albeit with a penchant for chocolate covered insects and a lack of pop culture awareness.
Anyway, he meets a girl with lots of issues including MYSTERIOUS VISIONS of an upcoming WORLD TRADE CENTER RELATED DISASTER. And they have a lovely and tragic codependent relationship that explores a lot of the difficulties of being with someone with a mental illness. I didn't really think the 9/11 as magical realism worked over all, but it did help create a really effective feeling of impending doom that ran through the back half of the book.
There's also a running subplot with a magician who speaks in this unbelievably annoying, fake celebrity patois.
The Last Illusion, inspired by a Persian folk tale, starts with a boy who is raised as a bird by his mother. He is rescued, and brought to New York where he is raised by a war hearted man/expert on feral children. Zal, the boy, grows up pretty normal, all things considered, which is to say he ends up as a familiar confused teenager type, albeit with a penchant for chocolate covered insects and a lack of pop culture awareness.
Anyway, he meets a girl with lots of issues including MYSTERIOUS VISIONS of an upcoming WORLD TRADE CENTER RELATED DISASTER. And they have a lovely and tragic codependent relationship that explores a lot of the difficulties of being with someone with a mental illness. I didn't really think the 9/11 as magical realism worked over all, but it did help create a really effective feeling of impending doom that ran through the back half of the book.
There's also a running subplot with a magician who speaks in this unbelievably annoying, fake celebrity patois.
suvata's review against another edition
5.0
A post-911 novel based on a Persian myth.
I really need to ignore the “average rating” number on Goodreads. I like to pick my next read based on many different sorts of my TBR list (currently 214 books). A few days ago, I decided to pick the book with the lowest average rating (3.40) which was The Last Illusion. Needless to say, it was a 5-star book in my opinion. This has happened to me more than once. Apparently, my taste in literature is beyond the norm. 🤓
Zal is a character I will never forget.
I really need to ignore the “average rating” number on Goodreads. I like to pick my next read based on many different sorts of my TBR list (currently 214 books). A few days ago, I decided to pick the book with the lowest average rating (3.40) which was The Last Illusion. Needless to say, it was a 5-star book in my opinion. This has happened to me more than once. Apparently, my taste in literature is beyond the norm. 🤓
Zal is a character I will never forget.
justjoel's review
3.0
Interesting blend of genres. This blends Persian myth with New York City just before Y2K and 9/11. While I felt like Zal's story was compelling, the editing (and I do dearly love when authors name their editors in the Afterword, as happened here, because it lets me know at whom my glare should be directed) could have been better. Simple stuff like "too" instead of "to," and then just wrong facts (no one microwaves frozen mice to feed their snakes—and if they do, they only make that mistake once and then they buy a new microwave).
Despite the errors, the slow start, and the mess of an ending, I liked the book.
3 out of 5 stars.
Despite the errors, the slow start, and the mess of an ending, I liked the book.
3 out of 5 stars.
theeditorreads's review against another edition
3.0
Synopsis:
At the age of forty-seven, Khanoom gives birth to a baby boy. An unplanned child with a husband who's long dead after a prolonged sickness, the baby's an albino. Khanoom has a fetish for catching birds and putting them in cages, all of whom she considers dear to her, much more than her eight children. Especially her eighth one, the albino, who she refers to as the white demon. She cuts off all human contact and keeps the child like a bird in a cage.
On intervention from Khanoom's seventh child, a woman named Zari, Zal is released into the world. He has now been adopted by a Tony Hendricks and is also being counselled by a psychologist, Dr Rhodes, both men specialising and involved in the study of feral children. This is the story of Zal Hendricks.
Review:
Based on an ancient Persian legend, The Last Illusion tells the story of Zal. The original story is one of the most celebrated ones of the Shahnameh, or the Book of Kings, the national epic of Iran. Much like what the Ramayana or the Mahabharata means to us Indians.
The book has dour humour, it's sickly hilarity cracks you up. As much as the story is inspired by an epic, the book seems to come out from the pages of a fantasy world. Though this fantasy is steeped in the reality of 2000-2001 New York. This is a very unconventional read. As different from every other story out there as it can be.
Divided into nine parts, with each part depicting Zal's life, his progress/regress in his journey of becoming a man from a bird; the author has woven a fantastic tale with quirky characters. Although I loved all of them, I liked Asiya McDonald more - the clairvoyant girlfriend. There is something quite magical in all the eccentricity. I liked her quirks, her visions, her delusions, everything. And her transformation too, a healthy transformation.
It indeed is! First, there's Zal, and though I know it's a story, it was still hard to digest about a mother being so cruel. And I was surprised to find that there are real instances of such cruelty too. Then there's what Willa, Asiya's younger sister, had to face at a young age.
Among all the relationships given in the book, I was struggling with Asiya and Zal's. That bird boy found love, or what he thought love is like, was in itself a wonder. But both their self-destructive tendencies made me tear my hair at times.
This was a whacky story. Everything came to a head in the last part. Something's about to happen, which we already know about, but so many things have already happened. The story is about so much more. So many hurts. So many lunacies, so many lucidities. While the outside world is going on, progressing, it seems the book, the story, came a full circle.
Released in the same year, I couldn't help but think of the movie - Birdman, which first released on 27 August, followed by a worldwide release on November 14.
Extra Reading:
About Zal
P.S. Picking up this book was no conscious decision. This is one book in a long time which I happened to chance across in the library shelves. The blurb ensnared me. This book is also my entry for #ReadingWomenChallenge Prompt 21: Book bought/borrowed in 2019. I borrowed this book from the local branch of Delhi Public Library.
Originally posted on:
https://sassyshaina.wordpress.com/2019/08/14/the-last-illusion-by-porochista-khakpour/
At the age of forty-seven, Khanoom gives birth to a baby boy. An unplanned child with a husband who's long dead after a prolonged sickness, the baby's an albino. Khanoom has a fetish for catching birds and putting them in cages, all of whom she considers dear to her, much more than her eight children. Especially her eighth one, the albino, who she refers to as the white demon. She cuts off all human contact and keeps the child like a bird in a cage.
On intervention from Khanoom's seventh child, a woman named Zari, Zal is released into the world. He has now been adopted by a Tony Hendricks and is also being counselled by a psychologist, Dr Rhodes, both men specialising and involved in the study of feral children. This is the story of Zal Hendricks.
Review:
Exactly once upon a time in a small village in northern Iran, a child of the wrong color was born.
Based on an ancient Persian legend, The Last Illusion tells the story of Zal. The original story is one of the most celebrated ones of the Shahnameh, or the Book of Kings, the national epic of Iran. Much like what the Ramayana or the Mahabharata means to us Indians.
The book has dour humour, it's sickly hilarity cracks you up. As much as the story is inspired by an epic, the book seems to come out from the pages of a fantasy world. Though this fantasy is steeped in the reality of 2000-2001 New York. This is a very unconventional read. As different from every other story out there as it can be.
Divided into nine parts, with each part depicting Zal's life, his progress/regress in his journey of becoming a man from a bird; the author has woven a fantastic tale with quirky characters. Although I loved all of them, I liked Asiya McDonald more - the clairvoyant girlfriend. There is something quite magical in all the eccentricity. I liked her quirks, her visions, her delusions, everything. And her transformation too, a healthy transformation.
The world was such a very bad place.
It indeed is! First, there's Zal, and though I know it's a story, it was still hard to digest about a mother being so cruel. And I was surprised to find that there are real instances of such cruelty too. Then there's what Willa, Asiya's younger sister, had to face at a young age.
His skin was pale and prone to irritations but nothing so different from the usual blemishy human.
Among all the relationships given in the book, I was struggling with Asiya and Zal's. That bird boy found love, or what he thought love is like, was in itself a wonder. But both their self-destructive tendencies made me tear my hair at times.
This was a whacky story. Everything came to a head in the last part. Something's about to happen, which we already know about, but so many things have already happened. The story is about so much more. So many hurts. So many lunacies, so many lucidities. While the outside world is going on, progressing, it seems the book, the story, came a full circle.
Released in the same year, I couldn't help but think of the movie - Birdman, which first released on 27 August, followed by a worldwide release on November 14.
Extra Reading:
About Zal
P.S. Picking up this book was no conscious decision. This is one book in a long time which I happened to chance across in the library shelves. The blurb ensnared me. This book is also my entry for #ReadingWomenChallenge Prompt 21: Book bought/borrowed in 2019. I borrowed this book from the local branch of Delhi Public Library.
Originally posted on:
https://sassyshaina.wordpress.com/2019/08/14/the-last-illusion-by-porochista-khakpour/
earlyandalone's review
3.0
More like 3.5 stars. The book started out strong, but lost me toward the end. The author tries to make a strong tie to 9/11 but it was too overblown and symbolic for me. The main characters, Zal and Asiya, are strange outcasts who find comfort in one another, and I liked that. I believe their relationship, but their circumstances and lives felt too strange and labored. An interesting read, but ultimately not satisfying.
curiousnoel's review
5.0
This book is brilliant, a richly layered story with deep characterization and deep psychology. Khakpour folds together childhood trauma, 9/11, magic tricks, clairvoyance, mental health, identity, and Persian literature into a novel that is unequivocally unique and beautifully written. I have never read anything like it. A masterpiece.
andrew61's review
4.0
This is a unique book which draws on a Persian myth to tell a story which climaxes in the events of 9/11 which still ripple in politics and the unsettled societies years on.
Zal is the final child born to an Iranian woman after her husband's death. He spends the first 10 years of his life in a birdcage until his sister frees him and he then is resettled in New York by a child psychologist hendricks who views zal, a feral child, as both anthropological experiment as well as son to assuage his grief after loss of his beloved wife.
Move forward to 31/12/1999 with society contemplating the end of the world and zal walking the streets of mahattan finds Asiya a lost young woman, anorexic daughter of socialite, muslim convert , and sibling of both a dramatically overweight beauty wilma and violent Zach.
As Zal develops relationships with this bizarre family he also has in the background a flamboyant magician silber who entrances Zal with a trick promising flight like a bird before seeking a final trick to make a NY monument disappear.
The portentous premonitions of asiya of disasters to come allow the writer to become fascinated by this curious cast of characters knowing that the climax will see a world changed forever.
This was a book that I enjoyed with characters who were both bizarre but hypnotic , like a fairground freak show but whose lives were so well drawn I found myself captivated. Definitely a world I was sorry to leave but a writer I will look forward to reading again.
Zal is the final child born to an Iranian woman after her husband's death. He spends the first 10 years of his life in a birdcage until his sister frees him and he then is resettled in New York by a child psychologist hendricks who views zal, a feral child, as both anthropological experiment as well as son to assuage his grief after loss of his beloved wife.
Move forward to 31/12/1999 with society contemplating the end of the world and zal walking the streets of mahattan finds Asiya a lost young woman, anorexic daughter of socialite, muslim convert , and sibling of both a dramatically overweight beauty wilma and violent Zach.
As Zal develops relationships with this bizarre family he also has in the background a flamboyant magician silber who entrances Zal with a trick promising flight like a bird before seeking a final trick to make a NY monument disappear.
The portentous premonitions of asiya of disasters to come allow the writer to become fascinated by this curious cast of characters knowing that the climax will see a world changed forever.
This was a book that I enjoyed with characters who were both bizarre but hypnotic , like a fairground freak show but whose lives were so well drawn I found myself captivated. Definitely a world I was sorry to leave but a writer I will look forward to reading again.
natesea's review
1.0
This is one of the most disappointing books I've ever read. It is on a 50 female authors one should read of 2014 list, and garnered a plethora of other accolades. Am I missing something? What, by description, seems an intriguing story about a feral boy raised as a bird by a disturbed mother, who is rescued and trying to adapt to life as an adult in New York, turns out to be a mess of a book - shallow and unbelievable characters, stagnant and melodramatic plot, a hodgepodge of myth attempting to weave it's way into a "modern" telling, and the list goes on. This novel fails in its attempt to cover too much deep territory.I forced my way through to the last 100 pages, and barely skimmed the rest.