Pen/Faulkner Award winner for Call Me Zebra, Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi has written another novel equally deserving of accolades. It is an all-consuming, exhausting narrative, following the thoughts of an Iranian-American woman as she returns, after twenty years, to Spain hoping for an exorcism of the confounding memories of a cruel love affair with a much older man. A parallel storyline describes the oppression and its consequences of one culture on another.
Savage Tongues, a better title than the earlier proposed Arezu (the main character's name), keens and seethes with angst as Arezu meets again the landscapes of her oppression/obsession. Beginning with a rape, the affair continued, shaped by Arezu's teenage passion, manipulated by her lover's use of that passion. Arezu's scars run deep; she visits and revisits her time in Marbella, engulfed by a complex of shame, anger, agitation, outrage, and fascination. She was seduced, and the allurement of that seduction is evident along with and in spite of the memories of her lover's brutal possessiveness and invidious objectification. (The comparison to Eastern and Western cultures is clear.)
Her scars do run deep, and her memories and thoughts take the reader, as well, deep into a maelstrom of emotions, circling and re-circling the events of those months so many years ago that have never been forgotten. Arezu has a woman friend along with her on this journey to the places in Marbella that have resonated through her life, and a loving and understanding husband in the States. Ultimately Arezu, and the reader, swirl higher and higher to escape (at last!) into an acceptance of human frailty and the contradictory facets of the human condition.
Savage Tongues, a better title than the earlier proposed Arezu (the main character's name), keens and seethes with angst as Arezu meets again the landscapes of her oppression/obsession. Beginning with a rape, the affair continued, shaped by Arezu's teenage passion, manipulated by her lover's use of that passion. Arezu's scars run deep; she visits and revisits her time in Marbella, engulfed by a complex of shame, anger, agitation, outrage, and fascination. She was seduced, and the allurement of that seduction is evident along with and in spite of the memories of her lover's brutal possessiveness and invidious objectification. (The comparison to Eastern and Western cultures is clear.)
Her scars do run deep, and her memories and thoughts take the reader, as well, deep into a maelstrom of emotions, circling and re-circling the events of those months so many years ago that have never been forgotten. Arezu has a woman friend along with her on this journey to the places in Marbella that have resonated through her life, and a loving and understanding husband in the States. Ultimately Arezu, and the reader, swirl higher and higher to escape (at last!) into an acceptance of human frailty and the contradictory facets of the human condition.