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How to Read the Air
How to Read the Air
How to Read the Air
Audiobook9 hours

How to Read the Air

Written by Dinaw Mengestu

Narrated by Corey Allen

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

African-born author Dinaw Mengestu's prose is praised as "heart-rending and indelible" (Publishers Weekly), and his debut novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was a New York Times Notable Book. In How to Read the Air, Mengestu crafts a moving tale about one man's search for identity. After his estranged Ethiopian immigrant father dies, Jonas hopes to answer questions about his heritage and culture. So he leaves his wife and home in New York and sets out across the trail his own parents took when they first arrived in America.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 14, 2010
ISBN9781449839802
How to Read the Air

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Reviews for How to Read the Air

Rating: 3.5445206575342465 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

146 ratings34 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Truly luscious language makes "How To Read The Air", by Dinaw Mengetsu, a brilliant piece of literature. It is, in fact, the only feature which kept me reading the book. While it is a very well constructed text, it is a terribly sad story. The reader is forced to witness Jonas walk through life, completely void of any ability to live in an emotional reality. This is partly due to a childhood in which he witnessed his father physically abuse his mother. Also, as a result of this abuse, both parents weren't able to provide a nurturing environment for Jonas, so there was a lack of emotional connection with his parents. The other contributing factor to his disconnect with reality, is his own choice to live outside the realm of true emotions. We see this when Jonas meets Angela on the job. Jonas follows Angela's lead, almost as though he were in a comatosed state, in building the frail structure of a relationship. Angela has some vague redeeming qualities, as she is the one who exposes Jonas to the land of the living, if only the edges of that land. Angela herself, is dealing with her own feelings of inadequacy, which stem from a less than nourishing childhood, and an emotionally and physically absent mother. The reader stands on the outside of the text, looking in, as these characters dance around one another, trying to make their recent marriage, something that will withstand the weaknesses found within both their characters. Jonas and Angela's life is surrounded by the tale of Jonas' parents marriage. The reader learns that Yousef and Mariam are Ethiopian immigrants, who are reconnected in America, after a year apart. Navigating a new marriage, new land, new language and new culture in the 1970's is no easy task for these newlyweds. When Mariam finds herself pregnant with Jonas, she realizes her life is now taking a turn which will include decision making for two, and no longer herself. Yousef is a short-tempered, abusive man who is incapable of demonstrating love to either Mariam, or his young son. The reader watches as this family physically and emotionally, move away from one another, and barely keep in touch - acting as though they were mere acquaintences, rather than father, mother and son. Again, this is a well written book, but depressing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It started out as not too interesting of a lead in, but it does get better as you share the characters' lives and see why they ended up the way they did and how the lives of immigrants is not always a pleasant one. There were a lot of powerful, thought-provoking messages throughout the book....it definitely isn't just a "surface" read. My rating is a 4/5 for interest and a 5/5 for the author's writing style....he is excellent at character development, scene description, and of course storytelling.The book began describing a scene of the narrator's parents leaving on a vacation and then moves into his life and the life of his girlfriend who work as a social worker and an attorney in an immigration center. It continues with incidents about their life in and out of the immigration center. The book goes back and forth describing the narrator's parents and then his life and the problems all of them had with the main focuses being: relationship problems, lack of communication, family, love, and finding out who you really are. The book also followed Jonas through his childhood and talked about how his life was in that house with his parents who really wanted nothing to do with each other....not a pleasant childhood. It also traced the path of his father from Ethopia to the United States. It was sad hearing what kind of life Jonas' mother had and how they didn't really keep in touch after he was an adult. Also very sad was the description of his relationship with his father and how it completely affected his life. Taken from page 101 concerning his relationship with his father...."and, I realized then that all I had to do to avoid him was blend into the background. That knowledge followed me from there so that eventually I thought of my obscurity as being essential to my survival."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A poignant and beautifully written book in which the son of Ethiopian immigrants to the U.S. struggles to understand the legacy of his parents' failed marriage and to claim an identity of his own. Mengestu has maintained the high standard he established with his first book, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, which I also highly recommend.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well written but badly described on the cover - led me to believe I'd be engaging with Ethiopia - but actually it's more of a literary North American angst - so I was disappointed. Still enjoyed it however, up to a point.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Despite lukewarm reviews in both the New York Times and the Guardian, I really liked this book. To be fair, the reviews did not pan the book but point to flaws in long awkward phrases that obscure the important bits, and odd word choices; but the reviewers look to more works from this very young and talented author.

    Like the reviewers, or maybe more than them, I found much to be admired in this ambitious novel. The storytelling is very creative, yet still grounded in plausibility of the trials and struggles of the protagonists parents. Jonas grows to finish college with a degree in English and a storytelling gift of his own. In fact, he builds much of his relationships on telling stories (read here - untruths). It is as if he is trying to fade away to obscurity as much as it was his mother's wish for herself. Yet, the more he distances himself from his family, friends and colleagues, the more he returns to the truth that he always will carry them with him - the parting truth of the book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Beautifully written yet unconvincing. We never deeply understand the motivations of the four main characters. Lot's of poetic writing but very little true emotion. The New Yorker short story extracted from the book (in the 20 under 40 series) was strangely powerful. The same story, diffused here through several chapters, seems empty and almost fake. The same can be said for the book as a whole, Nonetheless Mengetsu is a highly talented writer and no doubt better things will come.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The story of Jonas, the son of Ethiopian immigrants to the Midwest, is told in several threads, his marriage, his relationship with his parents, and his parents life in the Midwest. Mengetsu’s approach to telling this story is original and interesting.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I don't usually require a lot of action in a novel for me to enjoy it, but this book was far too slow. Nothing happened. I was bored the entire time. The writing was overly introspective. Every action each character takes is followed by a long explanation of why they are taking that action. Despite all all the descriptions, I rarely understood or empathized with any of the characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an excellent psychological study of a man in his attempt to comprehend himself and find his own identity. The plot shifts from his parent's to his marriage's story, reminiscent of the way the past inserts itself into the present. Occasionally it seems a little slow but overall, very enjoyable and interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Melancholic, elegiacal, and burdened by sorrow, this novel is a long good-bye to marriage between two couples -- the parents' and the son's marriages -- when people are mismatched and scarred by their personal limitations.We are inculcated that immigrants come to this country for a better life and get it. Not so Jonas' parents who emigrated from Ethiopia but not together. The separation and reunion has caused a rift. Jonas' father has violent tendencies, Jonas' mother is not always in control of her mind. His childhood is fraught with their battles and the emotional scars which leave him emotionally suppressed.There is artistic prose here but plot has been sacrificed to it. And there are better books about marriages than this one: "The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer. Read this novel for a contrast between African and African-American attitudes and orientations, if you will. But these, too, are better explored elsewhere: "Americanah" by Chimamanda Adichie.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have mixed impressions of this book. Much of the writing is lovely, with apt metaphors and astute observations about people and relationships. The story, however, frequently dragged. The behavior of many of the characters was extremely frustrating in that it was so often absurdly illogical and frequently detrimental. All of the characters also lacked real passion, and seemed resigned to their respective fates and unmotivated to grow or change their self-defeating behaviors.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A poignant and beautifully written book in which the son of Ethiopian immigrants to the U.S. struggles to understand the legacy of his parents' failed marriage and to claim an identity of his own. Mengestu has maintained the high standard he established with his first book, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, which I also highly recommend.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I really loved this book. It was a very quiet, subtle book, but it was very powerful. I really liked the way it was written, with Jonas as the narrator. I thought the characters were all really well developed, and it was interesting to see how Jonas' parents messed up relationship took a toll on him and ended up affecting his own marriage. Definitely recommend this to anyone who likes a good quiet read that is really well written.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book did not grab me and I stopped half-way thru. So many books, so little time. Felt slow-moving and ponderous.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Ever had a main character that just needed a good shaking, or perhaps a slap upside the head? Jonas certainly qualifies in my estimation. The only son of Ethopian refugees, he is raised within a highly abusive marriage by individuals who are damaged by their refugee experience. Jonas manages to screw up his life and his marriage by never fully committing to ANYTHING. This is the antithesis of the immigrant boot-strap story we've come to expect. I guess its good to be reminded that not everything is sweetness and light, but I found Jonas annoying. I was hoping he'd get his stuff in a pile, but he never did and I was left disappoined by the lack of a happy ending.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I was sent this book from the publisher. I'm more than halfway through it (read 184 pages), but it just does not grab me. The four main characters are Jonas, his Ethiopian immigrant parents Mariam and Yosef, and Jonas' wife Angela. There are also four intertwined stories: Jonas' and Angela's rocky relationship, Yosef's exodus to America; Yosef's and Mariam's road trip through the Midwest; and Jonas' present-day retracing of that trip. I found them hard to follow, especially with Jonas' frequent stretching of the truth. It got to the point where I did not want to try any more.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Basically this is a story of a man who lies. He lies to his spouse, he lies as a part of his job and he lies to his students. But we understand his need to lie, as it makes the most difficult parts of parts of his life more bearable. This book is beautifully written and I am already looking forward to Mengestu's next novel, having become a true fan after reading The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears,
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    How to Read the Air is the second novel by Dinaw Mengestu. Like his first, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, it is beautifully written. This book follows the protagonist, Jonas Woldemariam, as he retraces the steps of his parents' road trip from Peoria to Nashville, trying to make sense of his and his parents' lives. It's not really an uplifting book (Jonas's parents had an unhappy and abusive marriage and his mother left once he was in college, Jonas's marriage is falling apart) but as the story unfolds I found myself caring just as much as Jonas about what had happened and how the characters found themselves where they are.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    To me this was a beautifully written, multi-layered story of survival and self-discovery and one I will go back to to re-read all the passages I've marked.When we first meet Jonas Woldemariam, he’s at the beginning of retracing a trip his parents took across the Midwest 30 years ago, just before he was born. During this journey, he recalls a number of unfortunate recent events in his life--his father’s death, his failing marriage and the loss of his job, which is related to the story of his father’s tortuous immigration to the United States from Ethiopia. Pretty quickly you realize that Jonas is good at making things up and so you’re not really sure how much of what he’s telling you is true. The narrative jumps around a lot chronologically and that can also be disorienting. But eventually I realized that the main journey is the one Jonas is making emotionally.His father was an angry man who lashed out verbally and physically and Jonas perfected the art of “blending into the background” as a child so as not to be noticed by his father. “I had always suspected that at some early point in my life, while still living with my parents and their daily battles, I had gone numb as a tactical strategy.” Unfortunately, his childhood coping skills have become a major problem for him as an adult.Mengestu’s writing has a melancholy tone and the story was occasionally almost too painful to continue reading. But I loved the ending and was glad I finished Jonas’ journey. Early on Jonas is thinking about his father and says: “He had realized at a young age . . . that the world was a cruel and unfair place, and yet despite that, he . . . couldn’t stand to see some days end.” You’re never sure whether his father ever actually said this but by the end you know that Jonas could have and that he’s finally arrived at a better place.Highly recommended--4 ½ stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    How to Read the Air -a metaphor for trying to figure out ones life? This a beautifully written book about a man, Jonas, who tries to travel back in time through his parents desolving marriage. Why? To figure out is own tattered marriage? To find out why he's been adrift his entire adulthood? Travel with Jonas for a sad look at life, yet a worthwhile trip.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    How to Read the Air is the latest book from Dinaw Mengestu, and it's one that manages to explore the subtle differences between what we believe and what may be true.Briefly, it is the story of a man named Jonas, who attempts to reconstruct his parents first years in the US when they emigrated from Ethiopia. Their marriage was fractured and strange, and in the wake of his own disastrous marriage, he hopes to find answers to his personal identity by going back to his parent’s lives. He believes that by better understanding them, he can make sense of his own awkwardness. He describes his youth:“I had always suspected that at some early point in my life, while still living with my parents and their daily battles, I had gone numb as a tactical strategy, perhaps at exactly that moment when we’re supposed to be waking up to the world and stepping into our own.”However, rather than being a straightforward story of nostalgia, Mengestu deepens the narrative by showing, immediately, that Jonas is not exactly truthful. He works for an agency that helps new immigrants acquire legal citizenship in the US, and he’s known for his smudging the lines of truth to create more sympathetic experiences for his clients. In other words, he lies, boldly yet with the awareness of remaining credible. Thus, we learn our narrator is unreliable. How much truth will be revealed as he relates the story of his parents and his own marriage? This creates suspense and makes understanding the characters that much more complicated. A reader is forced to examine each statement and weigh it for accuracy, and consider what Jonas may be trying to hide.First, we learn of his parents. They emigrated separately, his father first with his mother coming a year later. They are two incredibly different personality types: his father is perceptive and quiet, with a gift for noticing his surroundings and an almost sixth-sense for staying out of trouble. His focus on intangible concepts makes him reserved and wise. His mother, on the other hand, is obsessed with the tangible: possessions made her feel safe and contented in Ethiopia, where her status was high. Now in the US, her position in the world has changed, and as a minority with less wealth than she’s used to, she is insecure and angry.Jonas himself married Angela, another lost soul who finds security in squirreling money away, while occasionally succumbing to a pair of Jimmy Choos for their therapeutic benefit. Angela is the most fascinating character to me, and in one of her conversations, she also reveals what she thinks of ‘telling the truth’:“There’s no such thing as kind of true. If I told you the whole story, you could say it’s true, but you don’t know the story. […] Everyone thinks they know the whole story because they saw something like it on television or read about it in a magazine. To them it’s all just one story told over and over. Change the dates and the names but it’s the same. Well, that’s not true. It’s not the same story.”Angela is beyond needy, and her outlet for her insecurities is to control others as much as possible. She pushes Jonas to change every chance she gets. Despite her success as an attorney, her deep unhappiness is revealed in snarky remarks and a mistrust of everyone. Jonas and Angela are doomed by their inability to know truth. Significantly, Angela is portrayed much like his mother-focused on concrete items she can see and own, while Jonas is more cerebral and aloof. Does he realize how he has replicated his parent's dynamics?Plot aside, the prevarication that Jonas is prone to makes reading this that much more interesting. It’s difficult to know what facts to accept or disregard, and he gives himself away at times. For example, at one point he describes his mother playing mind games with his father by making him wait endlessly in the car as they leave for their honeymoon. At one point she pretends to forget something and runs back into the house-she’s having a meltdown. Yet, her meltdown is counted in seconds (her little trick for calming herself), and so she allows herself a little more than 200 seconds to calm herself. Then she returns to the car. A stressed out woman with a meltdown that lasts less than four minutes? Seriously, how is that possibly a bad thing? Or is it that Jonas is letting us know that she isn’t actually as moody as he’s portrayed her? Could he be admitting that she's just as fearful as Angela, the woman he left? That would mean his version of both of these women, as controlling and difficult, may not be accurate. Is Jonas up for the challenge of truly understanding his own story?As a reader, I enjoyed this overall but a few things bothered me. For one, while delving deep into some explanations, he skims over other details that would have bearing: he never explains why, aside from a shared race, that he and Angela married. And, when he takes a job teaching, why the sudden epiphany about his suddenly fitting into the world? What changed? He had worked before in the public sector-what was it about this new job that flipped his identity over? Lastly, a few sentences were structurally ambiguous, and I had to catch myself and reread them a few times to figure out who he was talking about. A minor thing, but it was enough to trip the pace a bit.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    How To Read The Air is one of the most compelling books I have read in a long time. The story of immigrants whose lives are constantly interrupted by the volatile nature of life. Yosef and Mariam have spent the beginning of their marriage apart and once they are reunited they discover that they no longer fit together as a couple and as a result wind up divorced. Their son, Jonas, has never gotten along with either of his parents and so at the age of 30, decides to retrace his parent's life via a road trip - in an attempt to understand them better. This book has two stories within it - the story of Yosef and Mariam and the story of Jonas - both of which are beautifully written and intertwined in a fluid manner. I found the whole book to be rather engrossing and wound up getting lost in the lives of these sad people. Such a wonderful book to read - one I would definitely recommend.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    “We accumulate memories and in doing so begin to make our first tentative steps backward in time, to say things such as ‘I remember when I was.’ And from there our lives grow into multiple dimensions until eventually we learn to regret and finally to imagine.” Dinaw Mengestu’s “How to Read the Air” explores the belief that memory is the story of what has been, might have been, or never was. If two people experience an event, whose memory of the time is real? Can the telling of a memory enlarge and change it’s very shape? Jonas, a teacher, is a memory teller. He tells the story of his own life with his wife, Angela, and that of his parents via his memory, with his interpretations and embroideries. He speaks of his childhood memories of his home life: “…it was easy for terrible things to happen to women when they were out of sight. They took hard hits, and then later slept in your bed where you could protect them.” He tells his students of his father’s flight from Ethiopia: “And while this part of the story wasn’t true to anything I, or anyone I knew had ever experienced, it had an air of serendipitous salvation that struck me as being so unlikely that one had to believe it had occurred that way.” He ruins his marriage to Angela with his embellished memories and outright lies. He is a great storyteller; and he is a superb liar. He is lost emotionally because he has lost his family; knowing them mostly through memory rather than contact. Mengestu employs descriptive prose that is powerful and believable; sometimes realistic and sometimes almost mystical as he explores the concept of memory. “We persist and linger longer than we think, leaving traces of ourselves wherever we go. If you take that away, then we all simply vanish.” This book is a wonderful read that keeps you contemplating it's themes for days.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    “How to Read the Air” by Dinaw Mengestu is a thought provoking novel, telling the story of an immigrant family. Intertwined in the story of the troubled marriage of Jonas and Angela is the story of Jonas’s parents; of whom his father suffered greatly in his bid to reach the United States.Dinaw Mengestu’s novel also enlightens the reader to the difficulties faced by many immigrants - the prejudice and difficulties they must endure. “How to Read the Air” even touches on the affects of the 9/11 attacks and the many who lost their job as a result.For anyone searching in life, “How to Read the Air” tells the tale of an immigrant family and the searches for happiness that each sought.I received this book for free, to review from the Penguin Book Club. Also a member of Goodreads.com, Librarything.com and Bookdivas.comD Bettenson
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Being born and raised in the United States...Midwest, no less....I have found myself reading a large number of books about the immigrant experience. It has allowed me to expand my viewpoint as I travel the minefields of immigration, assimilation, and finally, acceptance of each character's life choices. Most of the books I've read were fiction, though the author is often an immigrant themselves, or at least second generation, and inserts a modicum of truth to their fictional protagonists, allowing the reader to delve into an experience we natives will never have. Dinaw Mengestu is one such author who brings his own family story to bear in his latest book "How To Read The Air". With a poetic touch as his muse, he slowly peels back the layers of his main character, Jonas, whose parents immigrated to America from a worn-torn Ethiopia in the 60's. The story threads its way between the present world of Jonas and his failing marriage, his parent's unhappy relationship that scarred him, and his father's tale of escape from Ethiopia that Jonas contrives for himself and the students he is currently teaching at a New York City private prep school. Though the fabric of the story can feel like it's drifting apart at times, his clear writing style holds everything together. At times Jonas describes his indecisiveness nature as someone who is "bobbing out to sea with nothing, not even so much as a life vest of companionship to hold onto."[ p. 54] So much of what Jonas wrestles with in this novel is where he belongs and how to achieve this feeling of acceptance for who he is. His explanation to his wife about the order of his class syllabus reveals his philosophy of life when he tells her, "We accumulate memories and in doing so begin to make our first tentative steps backward in time....And from there our lives grow into multiple dimensions until eventually we learn to regret and finally to imagine." [ p. 97] . Having read such books as "The Namesake", "The Inheritance of Loss", "What Is the What", and "Little Bee", I have come to the conclusion that adapting to life in a culture other than the one you were born to, or being children of first generation immigrants, is fraught with danger, delusion, and depression that affects the lives of all these characters and the authors who have tried to write about this unique experience. We in America have so many immigrant stories to tell, and Dinaw Mengestu's is one of the exceptional ones many readers will cherish.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Jonas Woldemariam, the American born son of Ethiopian immigrants, has recently lost his teaching job in Manhattan and separated from his wife. He seeks to recreate his late parents' journey from Peoria, Illinois to Nashville, Tennessee, in an effort to learn about their lives and to understand his own confused and troubled past.Jonas was born in the Midwest, not quite American nor fully African, and he is ostracized and treated as an exotic by his classmates and neighbors. His home is not a sanctuary, due to his father's violent outbursts towards him and his mother, and he copes by internalizing his thoughts and feelings, and making himself as invisible as possible to his father. He obtains a bachelor's degree in literature, moves to New York, and takes on a series of odd jobs. While working at a center that provides legal aid to recent immigrants he meets Angela, an African-American law student, and the two eventually marry.Angela loves Jonas, and through her connections at work she is able to get him a job teaching English literature at a private Upper East Side school. On the surface it would seem as though Jonas would be content; however, his self isolation and inability to express or articulate his feelings and his frequent tendency to lie or spout half-truths frustrate Angela, who throws herself into her work and spends less time with her husband as a result.After the couple separate, Jonas finds himself completely alone, as he has no friends or family. He has no clear sense of who he is or what he should do now that he is completely free. He realizes that he must go back to the past, to recreate his parents' journeys and lives as best he can, in order to determine what he should do with his life.[How to Read the Air] has some roots in the author's past, as he did grow up in Peoria, but it is far from an autobiographical novel. On my initial reading I was somewhat lukewarm toward this book, despite its beautiful writing and richly portrayed characters, mainly because I could not identify or understand Jonas. However, after reading several recent interviews of Mengestu and thinking about the book over the past few days, I have come to appreciate it much more, as I find that this book, and its protagonist, have a lot to say about the life of an immigrant to America, along with anyone who finds himself caught between cultures or engaged in a struggle of self discovery. The book is filled with melancholy, yet it ends on a hopeful note, as Jonas is a sympathetic character despite his many flaws and shortcomings.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a layered story with three plot-lines woven together. I really enjoyed the author's use of language. I felt a little saddened by the main character's difficulty connecting with anyone, although by the end he realizes that he is, in fact, a part of everyone close to him. The story he creates for his father's history is fascinating and I really liked how it was presented as a story he told his class. I have added Mengestu's other novel to my wish list and will look for future books as well. Thanks Early Reviewers for this book!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was my first time reading Dinaw Mengestu and I absolutely love his use of words and he eloquent writing. However, the story was extremely under whelming and disjointed. I found at times that I was getting into the groove of the story and then there would be something that just didn't seem to fit or make sense.Mengestu is obviously a brilliant writer and I am sorry that I didn't appreciate the book more.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. This is Mengestu's second novel. His debut was The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, which I also enjoyed. Jonas Woldemariam is the son of Ethiopian immigrants. He grew up in Peoria, Illinois, but when we first meet him, he is living in New York City and working for an organization that helps immigrants from around the world gain asylum in the United States. A large part of Jonas’s job is retelling their stories to increase their chances of gaining asylum. This idea that life stories are constructed and reconstructed pervades the book. As Jonas seeks a future for himself, he must make sense of his past. Through flashbacks to a trip that his parents took to Nashville before he was born, we gradually piece together the histories of Yosef and Mariam and come to understand how Jonas’s childhood experiences continue to impact him today. There were moments while reading this book that I was completely drawn in. Mengestu is one of those writers who chooses precisely the right words and details to evoke emotion and let readers inside the heads and hearts of the characters. This is a beautifully written novel.However, there were also moments while reading this book that the story was a bit hard to follow. The details of Yosef and Mariam’s life in Ethiopia, escape to the United States, and relationship as husband and wife were provided slowly throughout the book, and sometimes it was difficult to separate fact from reconstructed life story. Because of this shifting picture, it was hard to be sympathetic to either of these characters, or even to feel like I really understood Jonas. It wasn’t until I had turned the last page that I realized that was the point. Although we think that we understand the histories and experiences of others, life stories are complex. What we believe to be true reverberates throughout our lives and our relationships. It is not just the story that conveys that message – the message is reinforced through the experience of reading the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was torn- I would give Mengestu's writing style 5 stars but the story 3, so I averaged out at 4. The book was enjoyable to read because the writing flowed so poetically. Mengestu shares the stories of Jonas and his Ethiopian Immigrant parents, intertwining the stories to explore themes like identity and the relationship of the past to the present.Like several other reviewers, I had trouble getting attached to the main character. Jonas struck me as a weak and passive. I found the end interesting, but a bit unfulfilling. All in all, I loved the writing but I had to push myself to finish because I didn't grow attached to the story.