While I typically reserve my Enthusiasm (sic) for books that I’ve finished, I am currently just 100 pages into a novel that is energizing me as a reader in a way I have not experienced in quite some time: Best of Friends by Pakistani-British writer Kamila Shamsie. Alas, the book won’t hit bookstore shelves until September 27 (a great joy of being a bookseller is access to advance reader copies; but a nearly equal sorrow is not being able to share that joy with the world for several months leading up to the book’s publication date). So rather than dangle something inaccessible in front of readers’ noses, I’ll recommend instead Shamsie’s 2018 novel Home Fire, in hopes that you’ll be so hooked on the author’s deft lyricism that you’ll immediately preorder her forthcoming book.
A modern day Antigone retelling, Home Fire follows the stories of two intertwined British Muslim families. Isma Pasha has just left London to begin graduate studies in Boston, leaving her headstrong sister Aneeka behind. Meanwhile, their brother Parvaiz has disappeared, apparently radicalized and eager to follow in their jihadist father’s footsteps. In Boston, Isma reconnects with a family acquaintance and son of a U.K. politician with a reputation for eschewing Muslim customs to increase his approval, setting off a devastating series of events as the sisters attempt to bring Parvaiz home safely. (Greek tragedy readers will recognize many subtle and not so subtle links to Sophocles’ play.)
At merely 250 pages, the book is narratively complex and packed with intensity. The novel is told in multiple perspectives from various members of the two families, who serve as both the narrative viewpoints and a chorus of sorts. Shamsie’s writing is urgent and immersive as she builds towards a devastating ending. She crafts complicated characters for whom you fall hard. I read Home Fire in a few sittings, and carried it with me (both physically and metaphorically) during my non-reading hours.
Oddly, I doubt I would have picked up Home Fire if it had not been handed to me at the end of a job interview (I mistakenly believed reading it might help me land the job). One of my weaknesses as a reader is that I often look for characters or scenarios with traits I find familiar. I suppose I’m looking for an easy way in. At first glance, Home Fire did not offer me this—no likeminded character to attach to, no glimmer of my own experience to cling to. I’m so grateful I stepped out of my comfort zone.
Because the brilliance of Shamsie’s writing—in both Home Fire and Best of Friends—is not that she takes readers into a world completely separate from their own experience, though that is a worthy goal for a piece of writing and something many readers look for. Rather, she immerses you in a foreign world and then guides you to the human elements that makes a singular story feel universal, achieving a delicate balance between writing that helps you understand the experience of others and that which makes you feel seen. Reading Home Fire is, in part, an exercise in empathy—a gorgeously written, intensely heartbreaking, thought-provokingly subversive one at that.
Allie Levy owns and runs Still North Books & Bar in Hanover.