Customer Reviews

Bone Worship: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Elizabeth Eslami took me by the hand and led me into a fascinating, well written story that was a fresh and surprising combination of two themes -- familial dysfunction and cultural clashes. There is much to admire about the way in which Eslami created both desperation and wit within the personality of Jasmine, a young Iranian-American woman who, in so many ways, was rudderless.

Jasmine's longing to know her emotionally distant father, her confusion and pain over his expectations -vs- her own desires, and her very real emotions kept me turning pages. I applaud Eslami for her wise and insightful portrayal of Jasmine as she searched for her own identity and autonomy. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly!

What I liked most about this book is the nice twist on the classic theme of cultural and generational conflict. Stories of children torn between two cultures are (for me) always intrinsically captivating, but this book poses the question somewhat differently. Jasmine, the daughter of an Iranian immigrant and his American wife, sees little reason to commit to school or life in general when her parents have resolved to chart her life for her. But just as she begins to wonder why her father has kept his heritage secret from her, it is forced decisively upon her -- in the form of a traditional Iranian arranged marriage. So how can the child of an immigrant come to know and understand an alien heritage, if she simultaneously rejects its presence in her own life? Jasmine is not torn between cultures; she is torn between attitudes, between attraction and repulsion, acquiescence and defiance.
Eslami's prose ranges effortlessly from lyrical to explosive, from chiseled to tender. Skillful plotting also makes the book so satisying: several surprises emerge as the novel tracks Jasmine's development, not the least of which is her ultimate resolution of her father's get-married-or-else ultimatum.
The protagonist Jasmine is wry and sharp, and winningly misanthropic, like a bi-racial Juno but with profounder things on her mind. I think that her pleading, almost desperate drive to connect with a father she barely knows, actually resonates just as loudly as the more tangible issues of cultural conflict that provide the framework for their confrontation. Five stars, and I look forward to reading more by the author of this lovely debut novel.

This debut novel tells a nuanced, witty story of a young woman's "getting a life", almost accidentally. The protagonist, Jasmine, starts out adrift after failing at college. Her controlling Iranian immigrant father and cheerful American mother move her back home to supervise her adulthood choices, most notably, in trying to find a suitor for an arranged marriage. Jasmine has a difficult relationship with her aloof, mysterious father. She gradually begins finding her true self, and in the process understands both of her parents better, and finding love to boot. This story is told with a wealth of warmth, humor and insight. It was a fabulous read.

Jhumpa Lahiri may be the name that comes to mind first when you think of stories about immigrant families in America, and I love her work. But what I especially loved in Elizabeth Eslami's "Bone Worship" was something that's generally missing in Lahiri's stories: humor. For a novel that begins so grimly--with a set of mortified parents picking up their sullen daughter after she has flunked out of the University of Chicago--there was plenty in this book that made me laugh out loud.

What an unusual family we have here. Jasmine, the daughter who loves science but couldn't find her way through the ins and outs of a major northern university; her Iranian physician father, who wants Jasmine to marry in the traditional Iranian way--i.e., arranged--but who has all but abandoned his family in Iran and with them, his own history; and her Southern cheerleader mom, who accentuates the positive, as all good Southern girls do. The interactions, fueled by cultural and personality differences, among these three people--all of whom are lost in their own way--are fascinating, heartbreaking, hilarious. I felt that I got to know them all and my responses to each character were as complex as my responses would have been to real people.

The resolution of the story and its conflicts--which I see the Publishers Weekly reviewer referred to as "facile" and "tepid"--were to me surprising and satisfying. I never expected things to work out in the way they did, and I was pleased at the confident way in which Eslami pulled it all off.

Once I started reading "Bone Worship," I had trouble putting it down. I look forward to Eslami's next novel, and I wish she would hurry up!

I found Eslami's literary voice in "Bone Worship" to be one of the most refreshingly original I've come upon in a long time. Her prose is exquisite - breathtakingly beautiful, poetic, unpretentious, with clean and original metaphors and literary continuity. This is no easy feat and even more impressive when one considers how young Eslami is.

One reviewer criticized Eslami's characters, including her protagonist, Jasmine, for being shallow and unlikeable. I fear that the point was missed and suggest she read "A Catcher in the Rye." Given what we are told about Jasmine - her age, her background, her intense shyness and social isolation, I believe that the voice Eslami gave her was perfect.

I almost passed this novel by because I had had my fill of both fill in the blank meets American culture clashes as well as coming of age stories. But I'm glad I didn't.

Not sure how this book got 5 stars. It lacks depth and the main character Jasmine is impossible to like or care about. As an animal lover I found the sections describing animal abuse disturbing and had to skip them completely, regardless of the attempt to set a stage or mood. I wouldn't give this book to a friend and I'm glad I bought it used.

Jasmine, a young woman whose confusion about her life and herself is tangible and immediate, has just flunked out of university, despite her brilliance. She both knows and doesn't know why it all came apart, but her Iranian father doesn't care - he has decided that the only logical course is to arrange her marriage. Jasmine's American mother approves and Jasmine struggles to navigate their attempts to control her future and her own desperation to both make sense of and control her present. At first passive, she gradually discovers, and then seizes, possibilities, discovering herself in the process.

The lush, radiant language of this novel is utterly captivating, as are its complex characters. Jasmine's father is in many ways a nightmare of a man - while he plainly loves his family, he is determined to control them, perhaps as a means of protecting them from a dangerous and incomprehensible world. Although he is frustrating, it is impossible not to be fascinated and wonder about his life, as Jasmine does. He and Jasmine's equally complicated and exasperating mother throw Jasmine herself into relief - she is at once a mix of modern and ancient in her sensibilities, and her journey to find herself is both familiar and fresh. With characters that pop off the page and stories that unfold like dreams, Bone Worship is a gorgeous and supremely rewarding read.

Bone Worship follows Jasmine, a college dropout whose parents are determined to find a husband for her. She has no intention of going through with this arrangement, but begrudgingly she goes along with it almost as an experiment--to prove her parents wrong. She retreats into books, finds a job at the zoo doing poop `n scoop, and sabotages her father's attempts to find a mate for her. She envies her brother, Uri, an adventurer who escapes home, but unlike him she is drawn to her remote Iranian father and her over-sharing American mother who had married for love. Disappointed in love, her parents only want security for Jasmine. The novel moves poetically into her father's past as a boy in Iran, as Jasmine struggles to understand her father and his hardness, which has become her own. Along the way, she meets an unlikely suitor, a broken man who becomes whole with her even as she refuses to love him back. Bone Worship is a surprising, charming, and funny story about about the unpredictable nature of love.

great book....I really liked it and thought it was well-written. I felt like I was part of the Fahroodi family as I watched the story unfold.

Read this book. I don't really know what to say except that I had no expectations for this, just needed to read something that was different from the trend of what I had been reading and this was on the new release shelves at the library. It caught my eye, I read the blurb, and tried it. There is some real humor in here and some beautifully crafted language that I couldn't help but write down so I could remember it. It was funny, real, sad, somewhat in the way that movies like "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Win-Win" are. It's very tender and slow but graceful and smart. I am really rather impressed.