A review by saracatalyst
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A Place for Us is a beautiful book about family, generational change, and finding your place in the world. The specific context is a Muslim Indian family in which the parents are immigrants and the children are first generation Americans. As a white woman who studied STEM, I had little prior knowledge of these cultural intersections to draw on going into this book. I feel like a learned a lot and the author did a good job of providing a nuanced and complicated image of both the culture and the specific characters. The character development was great for most of the characters, but I felt like the middle child, Huda, was largely left out of much of the story. The narrative is nonlinear and made me think of The God of Small Things in some ways. 

Overall I would recommend this book. I could understand some people liking it less than me if you really need a story to be plot-driven or fast paced. There's plenty of plot, but large sections are primarily character-driven, and the book is on the longer side. I'm always a big fan of family epics like this. If you liked Pachinko, I could see you really enjoying this book.
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