Image: Penguin Random House
Teen Tuesday features All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. Ms. Tahir made a huge splash with her debut trilogy starter, An Ember in the Ashes. Here she turns from fantasy to contemporary realistic fiction and the results are gut-wrenching and utterly compelling.
Salahudin and Noor are eighteen-year-old seniors living in a small town in the Mojave Desert in California. They are the only Muslims in town and used to be best friends. Noor is an orphan who lost her parents in an earthquake in Pakistan when she was six. Her uncle, who owns a liquor store and was her only living relative, brought her to the U.S., but has banned her from speaking Punjabi or practicing Islam. Though Noor wishes to attend college and eventually study medicine, her uncle's plans for her to work at his liquor store full-time.
Sal's parents own the financially failing Cloud Rest Motel and his mother, Misbah has ignored her health problems due to lack of insurance. His father struggles with alcoholism. Sal learns of the severity of the financial problems when Misbah dies. His father is useless and Sal vows to save the motel, but makes a poor choice in order to do so.
The POV (point-of-view) shifts between Noor and Sal in the present with snippets of the past narrated by Misbah. The result is a feeling of immediacy and utter dread as the story unfolds. Issues of class, race, Islamaphobia, abuse, found family and the criminal justice system collide in a compelling, yet painful narrative. I read this one with my ears and had to stop often due to the intensity of emotions I felt.
Mature teen fans of the author's Ember in the Ashes Trilogy will most definitely want to read All My Rage, as will fans of contemporary realistic fiction. This is a story that will stay with me for a long time.
I'm so glad I read this with my ears. The three narrators were pitch perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment