Disoriental, by Négar Djavadi

Disoriental was the third book I've read with my Idlewild Books Women in Translation Book Club. I read it in fits and starts. Lately, I haven't been much in the mood for reading, or maybe I haven't been able to find the time. With the sun rising later, I sleep later, and with my crosswords and Italian practice each morning, I'm not left with much reading time before I have to start work. And I'm never good about reading in the evening. And then I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed with book club books -- like I wasn't reading anything I had chosen to read. (Of course, choosing participate in the book club was my decision, so I do realize it's on me. One of my qualities, but also my faults, is that I have a strong -- sometimes overly so -- sense of obligation.) I started the wonderful Bosnian novel, Death and the Dervish back in late August, and ended up setting it aside for four weeks while I read three consecutive books for book clubs (for three different book clubs, I should point out -- again, this is all my own fault). Anyway, maybe this sense of obligation and that Disoriental was keeping me from Death and the Dervish biased me against it somewhat.

I did enjoy Disoriental, or at least several aspects of it. The narrative is divided between the present and past, jumping back and forth within each chapter as the narrator tells us her memories. Early on, these memories go back even before her birth and her parents' births, as she recounts family stories that have been passed down through the generations. Later they are her own memories of her childhood in Tehran, her escape as a young girl, with her mother and two sisters, from Iran over the border into Turkey and eventually onward to France. And finally some memories of her time living in France and elsewhere in Europe, bringing the reader up to the present day. I found the portions from the past to be much more engaging than the portions from the present day (and, fortunately, those make up much more of the book). But the story felt incomplete, particularly as it got nearer to the present. The period from the narrator's paternal grandmother's birth up to the narrator's arrival in Paris is told in great detail. The period from the arrival in Paris to the present day is summed up in a few capsules. It left me feeling like there were gaping holes in the narrator's story, things that might have better explained her present-day self.