Home Fire by Shamila Shamsie

Chris B reports:

This book began quietly and grew in pitch and intensity. On re-reading the first chapter I enjoyed the subtlety of it more. I also liked the structure where instead of flitting between chronological times with different characters, the action progresses through time but from the different perspectives of the actors. However some of us also felt that this prevented a free flowing story and meant Shamsie was unable to explore the characters in depth or over time. Steve took to it at the beginning; drawn into gentle relationship with Isma, the difficulties in getting out of UK, establishing life outside the UK, and references to the rest of the family. Lovely description of Isma calming Aneeka. A great writer with good character development. 

I liked the themes of love and betrayal in both individual relationships and in relation to country and religion. I liked the variety of attitudes to being a committed Muslim in the book from apostate to jihadi extremist and shades in between, especially between Isma and Aneeka. I liked too the portrayal of the challenge of integration. Do you leave your culture behind and spend effort on proving this to the Daily Mail? Do you maintain some aspects such as religious beliefs and practices and try to be an ordinary citizen of your country in the face of other people’s suspicion and prejudice (e.g. in the interrogation room). Do you take up the challenge of supporting your fellow faithful in different conflict zones? Do you take on the mantle of the jihadist to eradicate the western materialist and oppressive world? And despite my feeling that some of this was portrayed a little too obviously, in fact there were lots of shades of gray. Parvaiz is a reluctant jihadi more concerned with living up to his father and the father figure, Farooq than either political success or religious fanaticism, Eamon shifts from an establishment figure to one of siding with Aneeka against his father, albeit for love rather than for belief.

For Richard, there were lots of echoes of his own experience and hence a very personal read. He liked too the subtlety e.g. in Parvaiz’ grooming and the relationship between Eamon and Aneeka. And the issue of how far to assimilate and how far to remain the outsider e.g. Lone becoming Christian. He recognized Parvais’s feeling that “we are in the majority in the Caliphate” and an attitude of “we’ll do to you what you do to us” from his visits to Israel. 

There is a lot of personal betrayal in the book too; Eamon by his father, Karamat by his son, Aneeka and Isma by Parvaiz, the Pasha children by their father. And the results are a personal tragedy for them all as it is in the Antigone story that Shamsie based some of this story on.  A lot too about secrecy and its negative effects but also how hard it is for people in public life to be open about their attitudes and ambiguities. Isma’s professorial friend seems to sum up the risk of personal secrecy: ‘I’m driving at the fact that habits of secrecy are damaging things,’ Hira said in her most professorial voice. ‘And they underestimate other people’s willingness to accept the complicated truths of your life.’

Several of us admired the wonderful description of grief: rivals the one on love in Corinthians in the Bible I thought she brought out the inner life of the characters and the character descriptions (e.g. the contradictory nature of Aneeka) beautifully. I liked all the descriptions of the closeness of the siblings e.g. helping Aneeka go to sleep and the contradictory feelings Eamon and Karamat had for each other.

Good but not intrusive descriptions of places and houses, US, UK, Syria, Turkey. Gave a good context and sense of place for the human interactions. 

What didn’t I like? Were the characters’ attitudes a little caricatured? The story a bit too obvious? British Muslims, jihadi groomers, British politician of Pakistani origin? Family broken apart by the very different reactions to prejudice and the harsh actions of a hard man proving himself? True love for family and the beloved? Were the coincidences a bit too contrived? Isma meeting Eamon in a cafe in a small town in America where she happened to be at college and his Mum’s family came from? Richard found the book two dimensional and felt it deteriorated e.g. in the conversation between Karamat and Eamon.  He also thought it sloppy that despite her showing she knew the top British diplomat in Pakistan is a High Commissioner, she referred to them as ambassador.

Overall, I liked Shamsie’s telling of the story and the characters and thought she treated well the challenge of integration as a first, second or third generation after migration, of being in a minority religion around which there is plenty of prejudice and discrimination and of being a person of colour in a predominantly white society. 

But Mark T found it hard going, clunky and hard to read  (perhaps due to his long days in the saddle and his first ewxpereine of the Kindle). But he liked the relationship with Aneeka and the surprise of her sexuality. Also, the intriguing history of Islam and that the family thought P’s change of attitude was due to a love affair not grooming. And it rang true that he would want to come back. The life of the Home Secretary and coping with the media were good. 

Chris W enjoyed reading a book with contemporary issues; the Home Secretary in real life is doing what the character does. Some scenes in particular made him think e.g. the interrogation scene and grooming. Yet the characters were not quite right; e.g. the home secretary in his relationship with his son. 

Steve felt that despite a good start, he didn’t quite connect with the characters, though he enjoyed it and was gripped by the perilous situation of Parvais, as a young man. Was she trying too hard to follow the Antigone story? Apparently she took up a challenge to write a novel based on Antigone. Literary elitism? Did this constrain her too much? Overall, he was disappointed. 

Mark W too was disappointed. He enjoyed first chapter; full of mysteries; second chapter still held; but it felt contrived to keep changing character. He became more irritated and felt the book ended suddenly. He found Isma the most interesting character but most irritated him. Whereas the men were either well meaning but dim or bastards. Food for thought: moral dilemma of response to people who leave to fight your country. 

 Andrew (from afar) enjoyed this story of faith and family, identity, rights and belief, acceptance and extremism, religious vs. national law, with its clever reworking of Antigone. He liked the story and its structure with the succession of voices although He thought it lost its way in the third quarter. Its focus on the politics of terrorism (and otherism) rather than the mechanics of terror made it more interesting for me and more difficult for Shamsie who deserves credit for the plot. The tension increased once Parvaiz got to Raqqa but for me it wasn’t a real page-turner. The section on Raqqa gave a good feeling of what it was like it was like to live and work there. And he liked the description of how it feels to be a Muslim in contemporary Britain. And, although the beginning and the end were excellent, there were few other stand-out sentences, and quite a few were clunky. This novel took me to places and lives which were new to me and made me think, but overall felt a bit thin and didn’t have the impact it might have had.

John (also afar) found it an interesting and provocative novel that kept you reading – with a real echo of Antigone running through the story.  Not only did it have all the elements of a torrid family tragedy, but also offered an insightful description of a community and context that don’t you often read about in novels (Muslim North London, Islam and ISIS, the family dynamics of senior politicians, etc.). He liked the different perspectives format and this novel seems to have all the elements of one he would normally relish, yet he felt strangely disengaged from the story and the characters. He felt oddly unmoved by it. He had the feeling of being just a distant observer rather than an engaged reader. 

He struggled to explain why this?  Maybe it was because it was about a context and issues he have so little exposure to; maybe because the story was too much of an artifice – too engineered, too much trying to echo Antigone: maybe because he have become inured to some of the issues, particularly around ISIS and British jihadis, through too much media coverage or journalistic commentary.  There are clearly many possible explanations.  In hindsight he think it was because he never warmed to the twins as characters and felt little empathy for them or interest in them as individuals – they came over as merely a device to carry the story.  In contrast he warmed to the older sister, Isma, and felt her character was better developed and he felt more for the struggles she faced.  He was glad he read this novel and will remember it for the conundrums it threw up.

In the Antigone story as told by Sophocles, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, defies her uncle Creon, King of Thebes and is sentenced to death but takes her won life before she can be executed. Her fiancée and Creon’s son, Haemon, kills himself over Antigone’s body. Some people found Shamsie’s ending too abrupt. But we can be in no doubt about what happened.

Discussion: We all face the dilemmas of the personal, religious vs. national, legal which the book explores. But the author was constrained by the Antigone story, which is why it doesn’t fully work.

SCORES Willm: 7, Mark W:  6 Steve: 5.5 Richard: 7 Mark T: 5.5 Chris W: 6 Chris B: 7, Andrew: 6 John 6.5

Kitty held by CB: £3.10

The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber

This book elicited one of the widest range of views and scores of any we have read. And this, despite escaping to the less than atmospheric upper room of The Ram due to a Liverpool - Man City football match being shown in the pub below.

In attendance: Chris B (book chooser), Andrew, Chris W, Mark T, Mark W., John Apologies: Willm, Richard and Steve

CB found it a very readable book and an engaging story. A satisfying book that hangs together as a convincing story despite the sci-fi context. SC really liked the book. It almost always passed the ‘do I want to pick it up and read it tonight’ test. It feels like an original, ambitious and absorbing creation. Overall, a big, interesting and readable book with thought-provoking ideas and some entertainingly sexy bits. A bit long but he liked it.

RV though unfinished, was enjoying the book.  It is very well written, with a very interesting protagonist, and is a book which raises a host of interesting ideas and issues, interleaved with a good sense of humour, good characters, interesting premise, and some good dialogue. MW found it easy to read, enjoyable, interesting. CW was happy to pick book up: it had enough new ideas and took different directions. MT was devouring it!

AA thought it terrific, beautifully written and Conradesque; a story of love and belonging, faith and fidelity; humanity and inhumanity, elevation and destruction, responsibility and deceit; individual and groups; fragility of everything; collapse of our planet as expected; suspense eg at the airport and carried on to the end. It progressed slowly; but he was keen to read on.

But JH found it a chore, an interesting idea made dreary. And for Willm, this wasn’t about strange new things but a rehash of tired old things. He found the language and structure exceedingly simplistic, which had the virtue, probably unintended, of making it a very rapid read.

CB liked the imagination and level of detail in the journey and on Oasis. It made a rich context for the story. Plenty of drama with the Jump (the way the spacecraft gets to the planet), the risks Peter, the protagonist faces on the strange planet and the guarded and somewhat one dimensional relationships on the base. Nice touches:  layers of detail: language, form, houses, sleeping etc of the Oasans; gradual engagement with Grainger, chapter headings as the last phrase in the chapter; plants, animals and landscape on the planet; rain and atmosphere; humour of misunderstandings e.g. passing water.

MW thought the Sci Fi ideas showed good imagination; but it was not such a big idea as Faber’s Under The Skin. CW thought some elements such as the building of the church and living with Oasans lacked interest: the Oasans were already converted. But he liked the imagery of the planet and the Brassiere and the mix of settings and detail eg cars. It raised questions: Why did the Oasans make crops in exchange for the drugs? Can you really screen out human characteristics so people can live in a sterile environment.  But made you think. SC too liked the sci-fi flavour - in a way this helps to unshackle the narrative from everyday distractions of earth-bound living, gives the author a chance to really fly with his ideas

For JH, the highpoint was Tesco going bankrupt. What was this book? Space exploration, colonisation, collapsing love story, faith collapsing? Interesting about how an ex-pat works in relation to people at home. But we should focus on solving our planet’s issues not spending money on space exploration.

MT found the religion interesting: related to his experience in a religious family.

AA thought it disappointing that Oasans spoke English and have a quasi human form. But liked the idea of faith as Peter’s latest addiction; the Eulogy for Severin; the proposal to Bea; the birth and death amongst the Oasans, the rain, alternation of earth and planet; the difficulty of communication when the “shoot” is less personal; humans being dependent on vulnerable people. Backstory was clear and consistent. Interesting: USIC staff keeping separate from their past; Tartaglione’s rant was good. Faber rejected his parents beliefs. Is this book about religion or human beings?

RV highlighted a passage from the very start (page 3) which shows both ideas and humour.

“Of course, everybody on earth had the power to reshape reality. It was one of the things Peter and Beatrice talked about a lot. The challenge of getting people to grasp that life was only as grim and confining as you perceived it to be. The challenge of getting people to see that the immutable facts of existence were not so immutable after all. The challenge of finding a simpler word for ‘immutable’ than ‘immutable’.”

He was struck by at least 50 different paragraphs or sentences, for example, when Peter looks through the Visitor’s Book in the Heathrow Prayer Room; his rather amazing sermon for Severin’s funeral; his interesting discussion of translations (“once it dawned on you that everyone who wasn’t a native speaker of Canaanite Hebrew, Koine Greek or Galilean Aramaic was at an equal disadvantage, you could relax and feel that Scripture in your own tongue was as good as Scripture in anyone else’s”); his lovely use of arcane English: “frankly barmy / he pointed out, with stonkingly obvious good sense”.

RV found Peter’s voice very authentic, and extremely different to the protagonist in Under the Skin – he clearly can write in very different ways. In some ways the book reminded RV of a science fiction novella he read 40+ years ago – A Case of Conscience, James Blish - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Conscience (a book that was very powerful at the time and one that has clearly stayed with him) also about a missionary to an alien race.

The book is by no means perfect (why does Peter not ask more questions of the Oasans, and the M6 does not go south of Birmingham!).  But it captures someone’s clear faith very well, and his ability to describe and discuss faith is extremely good.

For WM, the social references at the Base were all curiously anachronistic: posters depicting Rosie the Riveter, and the men eating lunch on a skyscraper girder; the music of Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra; and odd turns-of-phrase. All this from before the author was born and as the novel was set in the future, even if ever-so-slightly, most peculiar.  And, why on earth (literally) would they choose Peter of all available Christians? Why is everyone at Base (apart Grainger) so unbelievably passive? Why do two people go awol? Something in the white flower foodstuffs?

Many quotations from the Bible, as might be expected, but is this really the way evangelical spouses communicate with each other?  And, do they feel the need to explain the ‘real’ meaning  of the citations?  E.g. ‘Philippians 4:6 reassures us “be careful for nothing (i.e. don’t be anxious about anything)” ‘. On page 162  our hero writes to his wife that John said “Love not the world nor the things of the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, etc.etc.”  Although she is the one who converted him, and probably just as familiar with this quote as he is, he then goes on to ‘mansplain’ that John was being too harsh and that Jesus understood, and God understands, that people have a whole life to live before they die. ‘Mansplaining’ apart, I would have that thought that being cognisant of what Jesus understood and God understands is quite possibly a little above his pay grade.

Now, the author may just have been illustrating that this type of evangelical fervour is somewhat self-absorbed, or self-referential, and that Peter was hiding any real understanding, feelings or empathy behind a cloak of quotations. However, it seems to me that the author is fundamentally in sympathy with our Father Peter and that the whole ‘novel’ is really Saint Michel’s epistle to the converted, to the ignorant, and to naive 13 year olds who are seeking the ‘meaning of life’ and the answers that religion might provide. The medium is the message.            

SC agreed. He could have done without the detailed discussion of specific Bible passages, particularly as ‘translated’ by Peter. Was the author preaching, maybe trying to show off the depth of his Bible studies knowledge, or simply trowelling it on more thickly than the narrative really required? SC’s money’s on the latter. What was the author really trying to do here- was he coming up with a strong critique of Christian theology (which would have been ambitious), or making a more focused and barbed point about the innate flimsiness of any belief structure based on a single book, no matter how well it’s been parroted?

SC thought perhaps it’s a great love story. From quite early on,  he was hoping Grainger and Peter would get it on. The finale, which is not necessarily as expected, is sad and reminds him a bit of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex becomes a tool of the establishment.

SC thought the book is not without problems. The idea that Peter, a former criminal drug addict, has been selected to come and minister to an alien race which has ‘discovered’ God through a predecessor, purely to ‘keep them sweet’ and continue the trade in whiteflower products, is tenuous to say the least. Any such discovery of alien life would have triggered the most intricately analytical and complex project to learn as much as possible about these beings. Instead they are regarded as freaks and a hindrance to the aims of the colony. Really difficult to relate to this particular angle.

However, if somehow one lets that go, the idea of a drug-addict religious zealot (and his hornily zealous wife) arriving to build a church and adopt the missionary position somehow fits the plot, as does his gradual progress to ‘going native’ - a touch of Heart of Darkness here? SC liked the descriptions of the alien world and its inhabitants, though felt that it was rather lacking in detail, perhaps deliberately so.

CB liked the way Peter as a human being comes through the beliefs, whether his sexual urges, his doubts, his difficulty in communicating with his wife, his enjoyment of the calmness of the Oasan community, his despair at the sterile life of the base. In the end, his human experience overtakes his faith. CB really liked the description of faith: a strong belief but could equally be a human construct plus confusion of when God is responding or whether it is just a human reaction (eg when he wants to talk to his wife in the car on his first journey to the Oasans.

CB liked the development of the effect of being apart in a relationship and having very different experiences is well developed over time with a backdrop of disasters back on earth contrasting with Peter’s positive experience of his ministry and mainly calm life amongst the Oasans. By contrast, the community of people at the base are happy to leave their old lives behind and are self sufficient and work focussed which makes the times when people break out of this more full of tension and pathos (Grainger, Tartaglione, Kurtzberg).

SC agreed Bea’s bulletins from home kept ringing uncannily true, and all the more unsettling for that. Her growing anger with him and his lack of empathy with real world problems was believable, as was her increasingly dicey predicament. MW thought the relationship with three “women” the most interesting including deteriorating relationship with his wife, development of relationship with Grainger; weak character, end not satisfactory, lacked something.

For MT, the letters felt real and like his own experience, including the drifting apart. The Grainger relationship was interesting; the tension was good as they didn’t develop the relationship; felt the ending was left unresolved but liked the tension of this. AA asked has the relationship ended because it was based on faith which is lost? He liked the summing up of Peter’s dependency as being more on a woman than on Jesus.

For CB, the context at home feels like a very real threat as society slowly then more quickly starts to break down. And serves to alienate the couple further. Bea’s reactions are well developed even via the medium of letters. And the asserted purpose of the base as a base for the rich to escape to eventually comes out along with the reasons Peter is asked to minister to the Oasans.

So we found lots to like and be interested in as well as things to really dislike. An average score of 6.82 with a range of 2 - 8.5.

Scores: John 3.5; Mark T 8.5; Andrew 8.5; Chris 7.4; Mark W 7.2; Chris 7.75; Willlm 2; Steve: 8.5
Richard: 8