Fiction Selections

Crescent: A Novel
By Diana Abu-Jaber
($24.95)

You can smell the spices in the food, hear the sultry twang of the Middle Eastern music and feel the intensity of the coffee in this thoughtful, alluring and incredibly timely story. Crescent is a love story, cleverly told. Sirine is a chef at a Lebanese restaurant in Los Angeles - the center of the Middle Eastern community and second home to the staff of the Middle Eastern department from the local university. A beautiful blond-haired, green-eyed half-Iraqi, half-American woman, Sirine finds herself discovering love on many levels. Falling in love with the Iraqi professor Hanif (Han), loving the stories that her uncle tells, falling in love with the culture of her father, uncle, lover and the world of the Middle East.

Jaber weaves Sirine's life story and subsequent love story in with just one of many stories that her uncle tells her to clarify life issues. Middle Eastern culture relies on rich symbolism in its most traditional literature. Jaber uses the uncle's tale to bring the same sense of symbolism and mysticism to the very real story of Sirine and Han's blossoming love. Jaber also uses Sirine's skills as a chef to bring the culture of the Middle East to the reader through sumptuously detailed descriptions of the food that Sirine serves to her café customers, her uncle, extended family and lover.

Through the use of food and literature - both ways to bridge cultures - Jaber is also able to bring us a powerful view into a political world. Han is an Iraqi who feels he cannot return to his country. He longs to return to the country he so loves and be, once again, in the midst of a loving family. Having left just as Saddam Hussein comes to power, and knowing that his sister died a political prisoner, he realizes it would be suicidal to return. Through the professors at the school, the café regulars and Sirine's extended yet adoptive family, Jaber demonstrates the melting pot of the Middle East while at the same time shaping, through the similarities of the different countries, a view of the Middle East as a culture. She brings us the pain, the doubt, the longing for a world as remembered before the various conflicts between Iran, Iraq, the United States and various countries and Palestine and Israel.

Jaber is masterful. Crescent is sultry, smelling of cinnamon and cardamom and jasmine and laden with the feel of another culture and the life of exile. At the end, the reader has experienced a virtual detour to the Middle East, sipping a strong, dark coffee and enjoying a triangle of baklava.

Crescent is a perfect trio with Tamim Ansary's West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story (Picador; $13) and Tony Horwitz's Baghdad Without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia (Plume; $15) for anyone who wants to not only read great books but also get a sense of the culture of the Middle East.

Twelve Times Blessed
Jacquelyn Mitchard
($25.95)

True Dickinson slides off the snow and ice-covered road on her way home from her 43rd birthday party and her world changes. Just hours before her accident, she was resigned to living a long life of widowhood and knowing the joys of motherhood through the single child she bore before her young pilot husband was killed. Mitchard lays out the life of being a single 40-something in honest, open and uncomfortable ways. She expertly guides True through her self-deprecating life into the uncharted and unexpected new waters of romance, true "love at first sight", second chances and hope. The reader may have to rest from time-to-time as the writing is real and raw and can't help but to strike close to home. While long - 544 pages - the pages fly by. Twelve Times Blessed absorbs the reader and gives a lot to think about, identify with and be thankful for.

Family History
Dani Shapiro
($23)

You may want to find a quiet room - absent of any teenaged or near teenaged children - in which to absorb the shatteringly honest A Family History. Shapiro tells a heart wrenching story of a normal and not even dysfunctional family gone wildly astray in just a few short months. The Jensen family seems normal enough. Rachel Jensen, married for fifteen years, is happily ensconced in a small Massachusetts town with her teenage daughter Kate and husband, Ned. Not long after her Kate's return from summer camp, and an unexpected second pregnancy yielding Josh, her world starts to crumble. When Kate accidentally drops Josh, the family quickly spirals out of control and the emotional chaos and undoing take your breath away. Shapiro is a very good story teller - the reader is truly unsettled by how quickly a perfect world can turn ugly and how simple misunderstandings and emotions can take on a life of their own.

All He Ever Wanted
Anita Shreve
($25.95)

Professor Nicholas Van Tassel, Professor of Literature and Rhetoric at the stuffy, washed up New England University of Thrupp, falls instantly in love with Etna Bliss on the night a fire ravages the local hotel. This sets the scene for Van Tassel's memoir, penned on his train journey to his sister's funeral. Shreve brings us a story of love, infatuation and a turn-of-the-century case of stalking. Etna, never in love with Van Tassel, nevertheless agrees to marry him. While Etna lets Van Tassel know in unwavering tones that she does not and will never love him, he is most certain that over time he can change this. For 15 years, this marriage works both Etna and Nicholas into a happy family with little to complain about. Van Tassel moves up the academic ladder, Etna has peace and independence that she may not have enjoyed without their arrangement until bits of the past wiggle into the present and utterly devastate the future. Shreve leaves no stone unturned in a story that has no hero or heroine and shows the ugly side of every last character and, in so doing, lays out a completely believable yet sorry tale of love, infatuation, self absorption.

The Devil Wears Prada
Lauren Weisberger
($21.95)

It's all irresistible….the title, a "major" fashion magazine, an editor-in-chief most closely related to Mommy Dearest, and every designer, model, and photographer name seen in any issue both advertorially and editorially of any fashion magazine in the US…
and so goes the beginning of Andrea Sachs' journey. Graduating from Brown and feeling almost entitled to a writing job at The New Yorker, she lands instead at the (outer-office) desk of one of the most powerful editors in the business. It's just not the title she chose. You'll hate yourself for sympathizing with her, you'll remember your first New York job and ultimately you'll wish this was a meatier, better written tome. Sensibility (and love) prevail, but it's nowhere near as much fun as you wish it would be. However, if fashion magazine delivery dates in your mailbox are almost etched into your monthly mental calendar, as they are in mine, then you will need to read The Devil Wears Prada. Having done a similar job, albeit many years ago, I can only hope that this is fiction. After all, though some might consider putting out a fashion magazine "fluffy", we all took our jobs quite seriously. It was much more satisfying than that. -- Holly Adam, former Assistant Editor at Vogue Magazine, current owner of Cashmere Inc.