I am generally wary of novels with fruit on the cover. They tend to be heartwarming family sagas, for which I reached my quota in about 1994. But this story was something darker and stranger than its cover or title would anticipate, centering on an early 20th-century Jewish-Iranian family, and told through the recollections of one family daughter living in contemporary Los Angeles. Asher marries Rakhel, but they fail to have a child, while Asher's brother Ibrahim and his wife happily await their first. Asher's and Ibrahim's choices following the grief of the couple's infertility set up a twisted, dark revenge scenario, oddly believable and braided with strands from Old Testament greatest hits: the wisdom of Solomon, Abraham's sacrifice, Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Leah. Foroutan is skilled and compelling, but this is one bleak landscape. The moral of the story: hug a gynecologist today! (A pat on the back to a psychiatrist and a suffragette would not go amiss, either.)
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