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A review by pgchuis
Bone & Bread by Saleema Nawaz
3.0
3.5* rounded down.
Set mostly in Montreal, this novel tells the story of two sisters, Beena and Sadhana, who lose their (Sikh) father when they are infants and then their (hippie Irish American) mother when they are young teenagers. They are then raised by their uncle, still in the apartment above the family bagel shop. At 16 Beena becomes pregnant and Sadhana is hospitalized with anorexia for the first time.
At the beginning of the book we learn that Sadhana has just died and Beena and her son Quinn, now living in Ottawa, are struggling to come to terms with this. Each chapter is partly in the present of the need to clear out Sadhana's flat and Quinn's desire to meet his father, and partly describes the girls' childhood and teenage years and so on up to the present.
I have mixed feelings about this story. I found it generally interesting, although it was longer than it needed to be and dragged in the middle. Beena was a very passive, closed-off character, who seemed to believe people were unknowable and hard to get close to, but it seemed to me that she avoided ever being direct or straightforward with anyone. Her relationship with Sadhana was well-described and believable; the love and the hate and the inter-connectedness. On the other hand, the refugee story seemed tacked-on to make the story more relevant or something; I would have been more interested in hearing about the sisters' experiences of being partly Sikh.
Sad and well-written, but I wouldn't read it again.
Set mostly in Montreal, this novel tells the story of two sisters, Beena and Sadhana, who lose their (Sikh) father when they are infants and then their (hippie Irish American) mother when they are young teenagers. They are then raised by their uncle, still in the apartment above the family bagel shop. At 16 Beena becomes pregnant and Sadhana is hospitalized with anorexia for the first time.
At the beginning of the book we learn that Sadhana has just died and Beena and her son Quinn, now living in Ottawa, are struggling to come to terms with this. Each chapter is partly in the present of the need to clear out Sadhana's flat and Quinn's desire to meet his father, and partly describes the girls' childhood and teenage years and so on up to the present.
I have mixed feelings about this story. I found it generally interesting, although it was longer than it needed to be and dragged in the middle. Beena was a very passive, closed-off character, who seemed to believe people were unknowable and hard to get close to, but it seemed to me that she avoided ever being direct or straightforward with anyone. Her relationship with Sadhana was well-described and believable; the love and the hate and the inter-connectedness. On the other hand, the refugee story seemed tacked-on to make the story more relevant or something; I would have been more interested in hearing about the sisters' experiences of being partly Sikh.
Sad and well-written, but I wouldn't read it again.