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A review by ruthiella
Refuge by Dina Nayeri
2.0
Ostensibly this book is about the places where we seek refuge, whether one is literally fleeing for one’s life due to one’s political or religious beliefs or whether one is simply seeking comfort from the slings and arrows of our personal present and past. I get the message but the novel failed for me ultimately as fiction. I never believed it.
The book switches between the perspectives of Niloo, a young Iranian-American who emigrated to the U.S. with her mother and brother in the 1980s and Niloo’s father who remained in Iran. From the ages of 8 to 28 Niloo only sees her father four times.
Niloo is allegedly so scarred by the immigrant experience that she cannot find her figurative refuge until at 30 she meets up with some of the Iranian diaspora in Amsterdam. There she becomes connected to the culture she rejected while living in the U.S. and becomes involved with those fighting against the far-right Dutch anti-immigrant movement. Meanwhile, her dentist father is divorcing his third wife in Iran and considering immigrating himself, that is if his children will forgive his abandonment of them 25 years before.
Oh man, on paper this is a much better book than the one I read. Niloo has the emotional maturity of a 6 year old and this is what unfortunately drives the present day plot. Also, other than the repeated reference to her first night in Oklahoma which was spent in a homeless shelter and how she was the only middle eastern kid in school and didn’t know the lyrics to pop songs, there is no backstory to Niloo’s experiences in the U.S. as a child and teenager. As a Christian (the reason her mother had to leave Iran) did she not have had a support network of friends from church and from youth group? And there are so many pockets of Iranians in the U.S. Her father has no problem hooking up with any number of such people the world over and yet none of these became part of Niloo’s American life? So she was so starved for Persian connections that she is drawn only to them in Amsterdam? Naw, you just have to accept her tormented childhood and adolescence because the author tells you so. I do not doubt that children of immigrant parents raised in the U.S. feel conflicted about their familial heritage and American culture. But Nayeri didn’t sufficiently show this conflict for my satisfaction as a reader. And I also don’t understand Niloo’s poverty while growing up in the U.S. Her father is loaded. He is constantly throwing money around. Why didn’t he send some to his children?
Which brings me to Dr. Hamid, her dentist father. I guess the refuge he seeks he tries to find in his subsequent marriages and in opium. But again, this just didn’t seem real to me. And he is both the comic relief and the heavy weight in the book, which doesn’t quite work.
Possibly because it is from an adult perspective which is more in keeping with my own experience living in a culture outside of my own rather than that of a child, I much prefer Americanah as a book about how one can’t go home again. That book, despite the fact that Adiche and I are miles apart in our backgrounds and experiences rang true to me in a way that Refuge simply did not.
Read for TOB 2018
The book switches between the perspectives of Niloo, a young Iranian-American who emigrated to the U.S. with her mother and brother in the 1980s and Niloo’s father who remained in Iran. From the ages of 8 to 28 Niloo only sees her father four times.
Oh man, on paper this is a much better book than the one I read. Niloo has the emotional maturity of a 6 year old and this is what unfortunately drives the present day plot. Also, other than the repeated reference to her first night in Oklahoma which was spent in a homeless shelter and how she was the only middle eastern kid in school and didn’t know the lyrics to pop songs, there is no backstory to Niloo’s experiences in the U.S. as a child and teenager. As a Christian (the reason her mother had to leave Iran) did she not have had a support network of friends from church and from youth group? And there are so many pockets of Iranians in the U.S. Her father has no problem hooking up with any number of such people the world over and yet none of these became part of Niloo’s American life? So she was so starved for Persian connections that she is drawn only to them in Amsterdam? Naw, you just have to accept her tormented childhood and adolescence because the author tells you so. I do not doubt that children of immigrant parents raised in the U.S. feel conflicted about their familial heritage and American culture. But Nayeri didn’t sufficiently show this conflict for my satisfaction as a reader. And I also don’t understand Niloo’s poverty while growing up in the U.S. Her father is loaded. He is constantly throwing money around. Why didn’t he send some to his children?
Which brings me to Dr. Hamid, her dentist father. I guess the refuge he seeks he tries to find in his subsequent marriages and in opium. But again, this just didn’t seem real to me. And he is both the comic relief and the heavy weight in the book, which doesn’t quite work.
Possibly because it is from an adult perspective which is more in keeping with my own experience living in a culture outside of my own rather than that of a child, I much prefer Americanah as a book about how one can’t go home again. That book, despite the fact that Adiche and I are miles apart in our backgrounds and experiences rang true to me in a way that Refuge simply did not.
Read for TOB 2018