I picked up this book because of a review I read somewhere that compared Freudenberger to Jhumpa Lahiri; I suppose with expectations that high, I should have expected to be let down, which I definitely was to the nth degree. This book started out with so much potential, but about a quarter of the way through, it became almost unbearable.
The author has a pleasant, almost soothing tone that I enjoyed, but her plot and characterizations are a bit of a mess. The secondary characters were actually fairly well fleshed out, realistic, believable and sympathetic. Something however, went sorely amiss with the main character Amina, around whom the novel revolves. She is clearly flawed, but not in a sympathetic or relatable way that is necessary for a properly constructed central character. For every mistake she made, my connection to her weakened while my connection to the other characters increased. I felt myself judging her severely and unable to muster even the slightest bit of empathy for her character. Somehow, I don’t think this is what Freudenbeger was going for. Surprisingly, it was Kim, Amina’s unstable, hippy cousin-in-law and eventually even boring middle-class husband George who I found myself most interested in and empathizing with the most.
Plotwise, there was almost too much going on. The books reads like a Lahiri book at first, with simple, fluid language that led me to believe the story and characters would steal into my heart just from there everyday thoughts and actions. Unfortunately, Freudenberger seems to feel the need to throw in random and very unpredictable plot twists repeatedly throughout the book, to the point where I really didn’t feel any of the event were especially believable and it soured my opinion of the entire situation and the characters involved int he situations. This is a pleasant read to start, but by the second half of the book, I found myself quite irritated with Amina in particular and wishing the book would draw to an end. There was little redemption by the end of the book – Amina’s sense of entitlement compounded with with her generally annoying, nosey, self-absorbed character tarnishes the fluidity of the prose and puts a damper on what otherwise might have been a pleasant, if not especially thought provoking read.
