Sons and Other Flammable Objects

Sons and Other Flammable Objects - Porochista Khakpour

From Amazon: "Khakpour builds her luminously intelligent debut around the travails of an Iranian-American family caught in the feverish and paranoid currents immediately after 9/11. Darius Adam and his wife, Laleh (who, much to Darius's disgust, Americanizes her name to Lala), flee revolutionary Iran for the alien territory of Southern California, settling in an apartment complex with the allegorically enticing name of Eden Gardens. Son Xerxes grows up with psychological dual citizenship: regular American outside of Eden Gardens, but the son of bitter Darius and clueless Lala inside. Xerxes finds true paradise in watching Barbara Eden, the star of I Dream of Jeannie. For the brilliantly rendered Lala, America is not so bad—it's a good place to ''lose your mind, which is how Lala translates into English her forgetting her unhappy Tehran childhood. Against this background of a parody paradise, Khakpour plays out the events following 9/11, which will, grotesquely, unite the Adam family. By then Xerxes, 26, is an unemployed college grad in a New York airshaft-view apartment, as far from Eden Gardens as possible."

This was a random pick off a shelf at the library.. although I have a feeling it's on my list, just because of the strange title. I did actually enjoy the book, although it took a while for me to get into it. Once the story got going, I did find it hard to put down. I read this while in Toba, and ended up reading almost half of it in one evening. I'd recommend it to someone who wants something a bit different, with some more cultural influences.