Good Intentions

October 1, 2021

Following some attention-getting short stories, Ali's Good Intentions features a young British Pakistani man named Nur who must break it to his family on New Year's Eve that the woman he truly loves isn't Pakistani but Black (60,000-copy first printing). Set in Trinidad and Tobago, Banwo's When We Were Birds brings together Yejide, raised in a Port Angeles house built on the remains of a plantation whose owners enslaved her ancestors and left unprepared by her mother for her task in life--ferrying the city's souls into the afterlife--and Darwin, who must disregard the religious commandments of his true-believing Rastafarian mother and accept the only job he can find: that of grave digger. Stuck on her dissertation about the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou, Taiwanese American Ingrid Yang follows down a mysterious archival reference in Chou's Disorientation and ends up acknowledging her anger with academia and white institutions generally. Following up Clark's own questions about the children of victims of Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s, On a Night of a Thousand Stars features Paloma, an Argentine diplomat's college-age daughter, whose probing questions about her father's involvement in the military dictatorship put her family, her sense of self, and her very life in danger (30,000-copy first printing). In Friedman's Here Lies, climate change-mauled 2040s Louisiana requires cremation rather than burial at death, and Alma fights to reclaim her mother's ashes for a final journey. Cofounder of the Lit Camp Writers Conference, Kravetz reimagines events surrounding the composition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar in The Last Confessions of Sylvia P., which are related from the perspectives of Plath's psychiatrist, a nasty rival poet, and a curator years later (100,000-copy first printing). A Canadian film and television producer (she's responsible for the hit CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie), Nawaz crafts the story of a feckless young woman whose new imam expects better of her, and though there's the risk that Jameela Green Ruins Everything, she is on the case in an absurdist sort of way when he disappears. In Ronan's Chevy's in the Hole, a white man struggling to kick his drug habit and a Black woman working as an urban farmer try to make a go of it together in Flint, MI, as the water is becoming poisoned, with family histories woven in (50,000-copy first printing). In Stringfellow's Memphis, ten-year-old Joan flees her father's violence with her mother and sister to the house built in the historic Black district of Memphis by her grandfather, who was lynched only days after becoming the city's first Black detective.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 10, 2022
A young British Pakistani man must choose between family and true love in Ali’s alluring debut. From the moment Nur meets Yasmina at a party in 2014 while at university, he believes she could be the one for him—their conversation flows effortlessly, and she makes him feel “whole.” But he’s nervous his conservative family won’t approve of her, because she’s Black (“It’s bad enough marrying an Indian or a Bangladeshi Muslim. Maybe, just maybe, they’d be okay with someone white”). He keeps the relationship a secret for four years, even after they move in together, which creates tension between him and Yasmina, whose parents adore Nur. Ali shapes their relationship with vulnerable conversations about race and privilege, as Nur and Yasmina worry they might never be good enough for each other. In the end, they realize they ought to get in tune with themselves rather than force romantic bliss. It’s fairly familiar terrain, but well-drawn supporting characters such as Nur’s gay Muslim friend Imran round out this thoughtful portrait of young people weighing the bonds of tradition with personal identity. Readers will root for this imperfect love until the end.

January 15, 2022
A debut novel that suggests the term "star-crossed romance" may just be a way of pinning on the innocent cosmos the damage we do ourselves, without meaning to. Nur is a young Brit, eldest son in a close-knit family of Pakistani immigrants. As the novel begins on New Year's Eve, he is about to spill the news to his parents that he has, for the last four years, been seeing a woman--has for the last two of those been living with her, secretly--and that he intends to marry her. Yasmina is charming, self-possessed, lovely, intelligent, a Ph.D. student with a bright future; she's also the child of immigrants, also a practicing Muslim. But Nur's announcement has been long-delayed, and it feels guilty and furtive and fraught, an occasion for anxiety rather than joy. So why the hesitation, the cloak-and-dagger--why the lies? Because Yasmina's family is Sudanese, and Nur worries about his family's response to her Blackness. The rest of the book moves backward to depict, uncomfortably but effectively, the private history that's led to Nur's announcement and moves forward to explore the implications of his delay and reluctance for his relationships with both his family and Yasmina. The backward-looking part of the book has the plot of conventional romance; the forward-looking part, which explores the aftermath of Nur's announcement (built largely around his dithery way of arranging a first meeting between his parents and Yasmina's), is fresher and more compelling. In the tradition of Spike Lee's film School Daze, Ali's novel explores the ways that racism may do its insidious damage even among those who are traditionally not its targets and victims. Despite Nur's sense that he's impeccably right-minded and anti-racist, despite the fact that he truly loves Yasmina and wants to make his life with her, his insistence on putting off and putting off telling his family about his beloved may be less a realist's acknowledgment of the racism in the world than a kind of accommodation of or even collusion with it. An exploration of the ways that race and family ties may complicate or imperil romance even if everyone means well.

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February 15, 2022
In the story of Nur and Yasmina's promising relationship, and the troubling reality of unresolved racial dynamics, debut novelist Ali offers striking social insights and a peek into the life of the British Pakistani community in Birmingham. Nur, a British Pakistani man, and Yasmina, a British Sudanese woman, meet and fall in love as college students and subsequently move in together. But their relationship is under a dark cloud, as Nur doesn't introduce Yasmina to his family, or even talk to them about her. Convinced that his family will have difficulty accepting his Black girlfriend, Nur is caught between familial and cultural concerns and his desire for a future built on love. As Ali tackles the difficult reality of racism within ethnic groups tied to assumptions of solidarity, he succinctly delineates memorable characters and complex interactions. The narrative's leaps back and forward in time can be challenging, even as they serve to escalate the tension of Nur's damaging choices. In all, a vitally important exploration of deep-rooted prejudice, and the disconnect between understanding and the genuine practice of inclusiveness.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2022

DEBUT New Year's Eve 2018: Nur is back home in Birmingham to celebrate the holidays with his Pakistani family and to tell them about the Black Sudanese girlfriend he has kept secret from them for four years. Nur first met Yasmina at a party hosted by his ex-girlfriend when both were in university--he studying English literature and aspiring to become a writer, she taking journalism. Over the next four years, they move in together in Nottingham for Yasmina's PhD. But tensions mount as Yasmina is open with her family about their relationship while Nur keeps her a secret from his. After disappointing his parents by leaving home for university, he anticipates a greater clash with his family's values over his choice of girlfriend. VERDICT There is something of a Sally Rooney vibe to this story about twentysomethings navigating adult waters (the snappy dialogue, the conflicted emotions, the relationship dramas), but Ali's novel veers off on a darker course as questions of race and culture threaten to undermine a once solid love. This timely, savvy novel is recommended.--Barbara Love

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