Book Club | Book Chatter

I just finished The Septembers of Shiraz, by Dalia Sofer. I received this book from Gayle over at Everyday I Write The Book. If you are interested in the online book group she held for this book, click here to read what others had to say about it.

After the Iranian revolution, Isaac Amin, a rare gem dealer, is wrongly accused of being a Zionist spy. He is blindfolded and taken to prison without a chance to speak to his family. Leaving behind his wife and daughter and his son who is attending college in the states, Issac experiences the horrors of prison and realizes that he may not make it out alive.

This story, somewhat auto-biographical, is told very simply and told from many different points of view. It’s extremely well written and there were many times where I had to re-read a paragraph because of its lyrical nature. I have heard from others that the subject matter, particularly the torture scenes are too heavy to get through, but I felt the author handled them well. Not graphic..but enough of a description to experience what Isaac is feeling. The author also uses a very even, if not dispassionate tone throughout the story and I felt this to be appropriate, given the character’s situation. In order to survive difficult times, people often become numb. I felt this was the case here and it worked well for the story.

The Septembers of Shiraz would be a very good book club pick. There is lots to discuss here and the beauty of the writing makes it all the more worthwhile. Dalia Sofer is currently working on her next book and after reading Septembers, I can honestly say that I am eagerly awaiting its debut!

I had a hard time with this book. It started out rough.. got better…and then ended poorly. A young woman who makes her living as a pole dancer in a gentleman’s club, has a one night stand with a handsome stranger. We don’t learn too much about this stranger, but their meeting leads the authorities to believe that she is a terrorist. Instead of going to the police to explain the situation, she decides to go into hiding.

My problem with this novel was not her profession… or her lack of education…or the dark and depressing subject matter… my problem is that the main character seemed to to be driven, only by money, and not much else. I get that she probably needed to focus on something material, in order to get her through her grisly line of work, but when she was accused of being a terrorist… I didn’t get that she was genuinely panicked over it. She just seemed to flit from one location to another.. perhaps it was her drug use. She seemed to be looking at things through a filter.

In the first part of the book, we know this woman as “The Doll”. This is a good name for her as she appears to be very one dimensional. Towards the end of the book, we learn her real name and we learn some things about her that make her more real to us. However, I don’t feel that this information was given to us early enough.

One descriptive word that came to mind when trying to describe this book to my husband was “gritty”. The media plays a large role in this novel, and I kept picturing the dark, gritty quality of a bad news clip taken in some foreign land. Overall, the book left me very unsettled and disturbed.

If you want a departure from your normal reading, then this might be a book for you.

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