meghan rose allen

My last few reviews, I feel like I’ve had something pithy with which to start off. I don’t have anything pithy here. This isn’t a novel of levity that I can summarize with a few bon mots (or a Tom Lehrer song). This is an earthy tome of a family deep in Pakistan’s tribal region. We are given three brothers, each of whom is sketched only enough so that we understand that one is The Collaborator, one the The Avoider, and the final one The Revolutionary. They are such chosen to ultimately to make the point that it is meaningless to pick a role within a corrupt system; such a system, no matter the choice, grinds everyone in it to dust.

And so, the brothers in The Shadow of the Crescent Moon make lofty speeches to each other, interrupted by an omniscient narrator eager to explain away some points. Motivations are simplistic because, in a struggle to survive, the characters lack the privilege of debating philosophy and nit-picking details. So that works. But then the simplicity and shallowness worms its way through the plot. An example: The characters are Shia and against the military Pakistani government. The Revolutionary has blown things up, targeted politicians, etc. Their cause is presented as, not just exactly, but understandable. But in an encounter with Sunni Talibs, the novel almost ridicules them and their anger. You could draw something out of that, these parallel yet separate revolutions, but nothing is. We have a novel where things are told and shown to you but it’s all shadows; nothing underneath. We have been given lyricism without depth.

The novel ends, somewhat abruptly, with one of those vague, cloudy, endings seemingly preferred by first-time novelists (does Hayat know was is going to happen?). That’s it? I thought. Times I was reminded of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, with the ending that is that maybe shouldn’t be and the lack of markers of time. Not for the core of the novel, which takes place over the first morning of Eid, but for the past. I could never get a grasp on when exactly anything before this first day of Eid happened — a few days, a few weeks, a few months? Like in Dead Souls, with how long was Chichikov in the village, how long ago did the father die in The Shadow of the Crescent Moon? Is it important? Does it matter? It adds to the feeling of ethereality, of incredulity of the novel.

A timely novel, but a little uneven.

The Shadow of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto went on sale March 24, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I knew you would.

Is it strange that I am describing a book about a dead teen restricted for fifty years to an afterlife reserved exclusively for thirteen year old Americans as just as peppy as The Periodic Table of the Elements Song? (Although perhaps anything set to the tune of I Am The Very Model of a Model Major General would be peppy. Let someone record Eichmann In Jerusalem to it and we’ll see.) Of course, this comparison is set off by the fact that Oliver, the protagonist and ghostly spiritual successor to Christopher from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, has memorized the periodic table of the elements and the chapter headings are each little element boxes from the chart. But I stand by my peppiness. We have a surprisingly peppy novel.

Now I’ve looked up peppy in a thesaurus because I should probably move onto another adjective, but I don’t like any of the synonyms listed. Pep. A novel that should be as dour as not allowing yourself to kill yourself until your dead son’s cat dies is almost life-affirming instead. It’s kind of odd. Or amazing. Or odazing (my new portmanteau!). But basically, whatever it is, it works really well as a novel. The third (I never know to divide books into acts the way fancy reviewers do, so I’ll just say from around page 259 in my copy of 292 pages, which is a relatively useless measure to anyone not with my kobo) act falters slightly, knocking us down from five to four and a half stars, but that’s hardly a strike against a first novel. I’m sure Neil Smith is hardly going to shed tears because unknown-me knocked half a star off. I can’t even write my first novel. His first novel gets an A+, with a big gold sticker since he doesn’t drag out the revelations all to the end so he can have a big bang, shocked you senseless, who cares about all the character development, ending. It’s a progression that trusts the reader to keep going. I like it when writers trust me enough to let me be and don’t spend their time trying to fool me unnecessarily. Each new piece of information is unexpected but expected both. My kobo notes at the front give my guess as to what happened. They were right. But I didn’t mind as it all rolled out. I enjoyed finding out the plot.

Plus it looked like someone actually tried to make the ePub look pretty, rather than just ran a Word file through a converter. A nice change for once.

Boo by Neil Smith went on sale May 19, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.