A Tale of Trying to Overcome Unhappy Lives

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Initially the plot seemed interesting. I felt like it might be 4 star read. The Marbella airport arrival of the 37-year-old first person narrator drew me in, and the woman’s apprehension is palpable, despite the passage of 20 years. The family history of this first-person narrator was as unsettling and turbulent as that one Spanish summer where she had an affair in her father's apartment with Omar, a 40-year-old step-relative. She’d been vulnerable because of her youth but above all because her father did not show up.

Unfortunately, the narrator’s entire life had been disappointments. Her father openly professed his love of Middle Eastern women, an attraction based on what he felt was their obedience, yet spoke to his half-Iranian daughter in a derogatory about “her people.”

Now that the narrator has inherited her father’s apartment, she returns to the site of upsetting memories. With each page, there are hints that the affair with Omar was not a loving one: references to bruises and even Omar’s sadism. This return journey, however, is with her queer woman friend, Ellie, who understands the narrator’s emotions since Ellie felt rejected by her Orthodox Jewish family because of her sexual orientation. And so, these two women arrange to meet in Spain to share their journey of recovery. The narrator has left behind her husband. And since it seems that he has never understood his wife's fluctuating moods, it is no surprise that the narrator wanted to confront her past without him.

I feel uncertain about this book. Where is it headed? It it going to be a flashback story with all the details of Omar's abusive sexual predation with teenage girls? This is one of those times where I think a person would have to read many more chapters to be able to get a feel for the book and its rating. However, with only the preview pages to assess and a comparison to Shirley Jackson, the mental image I have of human cruelty a la Jackson's story "The Lottery", "I am rounding down my desire for a half star to a three-star rating.