Reviews

Books

Lost in Tehran

A memorable title will surely attract readers, but when a book becomes a classic, it's hard to say whether the title has been part of its canonization or has merely become retroactively canonical. Would Trimalchio in West Egg, one of Fitzgerald's initial choices, have in time accrued the same force as The Great Gatsby?

The Septembers of Shiraz, poignant once you've read this first novel by Dalia Sofer, is, on its own, a title at once overly poetic and misleading. An American reader might be forgiven for thinking Sofer has written a romance set in the Napa Valley, Sideways with Vaseline on the lens.

And that would be a great shame because The Septembers of Shiraz is a remarkable debut: the richly evocative, powerfully affecting depiction of a prosperous Jewish family in Tehran shortly after the revolution. In this fickle literary world, it's impossible to predict whether Sofer's novel will become a classic, but it certainly stands a chance.

Claire Messud

Parting gift

I was worried that To My Dearest Friends would turn out to be a "You go, girl!" book. The elements were all in place. Two 60-ish New York women - Alice, aloof and self-contained, and Nanny, casual and effusive - meet when their recently deceased friend, Roberta, entrusts them with the key to a safe-deposit box and a note that says: "You'll know what to do."

In the vault, the women discover a steamy letter to Roberta from an anonymous lover. Will they track down this shadowy figure? Will they become friends during the search, perhaps discovering a few truths about themselves along the way?

Yes, the book's plot seems tailor-made for airport bookshops and Diane Keaton movies, but in Patricia Volk's deft hands it's entirely redeemed. Volk, the author of three previous books of fiction as well as the memoir Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family, knows how to transform a workaday plot into something special: accessorize it! Every page is studded with precise and succulent detail.

Volk uses both women as narrators and doesn't worry about making her characters huggable, as long as they're lively and real. And she never forgets that a book's setting can make a great character itself. In this case, that setting is the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Alice, the prim businesswoman who likes all her clothes to be "the colors of the inside of an oyster shell", owns an expensive secondhand clothing store.

Nanny, meanwhile, is a former therapist who now works in real estate. She is frantically trying to find the perfect Fifth Avenue "classic six" for a very pregnant young couple.

Both women have the usual complement of family distractions - including Alice's alcoholic husband, who passes out at a performance of The Magic Flute and has to be bundled off to a secret medical alcove somewhere in the underbelly of the opera house.

With so much going on, it doesn't matter that the ostensible main plot sometimes disappears. After all, Roberta's dead and her friends are very much alive. There are few surprises; indeed, for the alert reader there may not be any. But that's not the point either. The point is that To My Dearest Friends is a cozy, kick-off-your-shoes-and-curl-up novel. If you happen to find it in an airport bookstore, you're lucky. Just make sure you remember to catch your flight. Ann Hodgman

The New York Times Syndicate

(China Daily 08/14/2007 page20)