memelollars's review against another edition
5.0
I first read this book in 2006, when Diana Abu-Jaber came to Eugene on a book tour for her food memoir, The Language of Baklava. I was able to participate in a student writing workshop that she lead (amazing experience!), hear her speak a couple of times, and attend a large reading group at the local library where my own English professor spoke about the book. I don't know if I have ever seen so many people so truly excited (exuberant, actually!) about a book, and her readings are the only ones I have been to that were packed and overflowing with people.
I was excited about the book too: all its lush descriptions, warm atmosphere of community and food. It's set in a college town (Westwood, CA). Sirine is thirty-nine and a chef at a small, Lebanese restaurant. She is a second-generation American, and lives with her uncle, who spins tales about her Arab roots. The hub of the novel is the restaurant, the center of Sirine's Arab-American community, and the place where she encounters Hanif, a young professor of Arab literature and an Iraqi exile. He is complicated, charming, and mysterious, and Sirine falls in love. This love is only the beginning of a complex journey of discovery about herself, her roots and her relationship to them, and the nuanced man that she has come to love. It is a beautiful, exotic book.
If I could adopt the milieu of any novel, it would be Crescent. It's one of my favorites.
I was excited about the book too: all its lush descriptions, warm atmosphere of community and food. It's set in a college town (Westwood, CA). Sirine is thirty-nine and a chef at a small, Lebanese restaurant. She is a second-generation American, and lives with her uncle, who spins tales about her Arab roots. The hub of the novel is the restaurant, the center of Sirine's Arab-American community, and the place where she encounters Hanif, a young professor of Arab literature and an Iraqi exile. He is complicated, charming, and mysterious, and Sirine falls in love. This love is only the beginning of a complex journey of discovery about herself, her roots and her relationship to them, and the nuanced man that she has come to love. It is a beautiful, exotic book.
If I could adopt the milieu of any novel, it would be Crescent. It's one of my favorites.
annebennett1957's review against another edition
4.0
At last a sweet love story with other delectable tidbits: cultural information about Iraqi/Arab culture, food, music, folklore, and a wonderful cast of characters. We had our best book club discussion over this book to date.
(Catching up on reviews for books read before blogging/Goodreads days, made from notes made at the time the book was read. Written on 7/27/21.)
(Catching up on reviews for books read before blogging/Goodreads days, made from notes made at the time the book was read. Written on 7/27/21.)
abookolive's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
jeannakedrowski's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
kblincoln's review against another edition
5.0
Sirine is a chef in a Middle Eastern restaurant in LA, the orphaned child of Red Cross worker parents killed in Africa, raised by an Iraqi uncle amongst poetry, literature, and fairy-tale like stories of family and possibly Omar Sharif.
Her tale is redolent with sumac, garlic, thyme and spotted olive oil and currants. There is a shifting POV that creates uneasiness to her story, that puts you offbalance when you read about her love affair with an Iraqi exile professor or when you listen to her uncle talk about the journey of her grandmother to find her missing so, the man who sells himself as a slave and then pretends to drown by throwing himself off the boat mid-sea and is stolen by a mermaid before he comes to the USA.
And it is also the tale of longing, love, and loss for a country, for an identity, as the cafe where Sirine works is mainly populated by emigres and students from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt-- all the colors and flavors of what being an Arab might mean as they are irresistably drawn to the food and memories she creates.
There are also dark political undercurrents in the story that ultimately drag some of the main characters down, the legacy of the USA's embargo against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's rule.
At the end, you are left full, like you've eaten a veritable fragrant feast of emotions and history and tales, but also uncomfortable like you've taken in too much, too much of Sirine's friends caring for her, of the mysterious photographer Nathan's heartbreak, of the tragedy of loving a country and having to leave it in Sirine's lover, Han. This is a beautiful, difficult tale, and near the end, I got impatient with the author's pattern of just listing food ingredients as some kind of code for Sirine's mental state, but could not fault the overall emotionally deep affect.
Her tale is redolent with sumac, garlic, thyme and spotted olive oil and currants. There is a shifting POV that creates uneasiness to her story, that puts you offbalance when you read about her love affair with an Iraqi exile professor or when you listen to her uncle talk about the journey of her grandmother to find her missing so, the man who sells himself as a slave and then pretends to drown by throwing himself off the boat mid-sea and is stolen by a mermaid before he comes to the USA.
And it is also the tale of longing, love, and loss for a country, for an identity, as the cafe where Sirine works is mainly populated by emigres and students from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt-- all the colors and flavors of what being an Arab might mean as they are irresistably drawn to the food and memories she creates.
There are also dark political undercurrents in the story that ultimately drag some of the main characters down, the legacy of the USA's embargo against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's rule.
At the end, you are left full, like you've eaten a veritable fragrant feast of emotions and history and tales, but also uncomfortable like you've taken in too much, too much of Sirine's friends caring for her, of the mysterious photographer Nathan's heartbreak, of the tragedy of loving a country and having to leave it in Sirine's lover, Han. This is a beautiful, difficult tale, and near the end, I got impatient with the author's pattern of just listing food ingredients as some kind of code for Sirine's mental state, but could not fault the overall emotionally deep affect.
mrssoule's review against another edition
3.0
An American chef of Iraqi heritage works at a Middle Eastern cafe and allows her cooking, her friends, and her uncle to be her world - until she is introduced to a handsome Iraqi professor with whom she begins a passionate love affair. Due to his influence - his longing for home and frustrations with political exile - she begins exploring her own Iraqi heritage through food, family history, the news, and Islam.
This book made me hungry for Middle Eastern fare! The food descriptions are mouth-watering and writing style soothing. The one thing that bothered me about this book was the sex - the heroine sleeps with two different men in a short amount of time - one for love, the other for reasons completely unclear to me - and it just didn't seem to fit the rest of the story, especially with her uncle's wisdom and in the midst of her exploring her religious roots.
Something I Learned: Islam uses the crescent moon to symbolize hope and the beginning of a new time. The crescent is the first sliver of moon seen after the new moon.
Words I Learned:
mellifluous = smooth and sweet
perspicacious = having penetrating mental discernment
sough = to make a soft murmuring or rustling sound
This book made me hungry for Middle Eastern fare! The food descriptions are mouth-watering and writing style soothing. The one thing that bothered me about this book was the sex - the heroine sleeps with two different men in a short amount of time - one for love, the other for reasons completely unclear to me - and it just didn't seem to fit the rest of the story, especially with her uncle's wisdom and in the midst of her exploring her religious roots.
Something I Learned: Islam uses the crescent moon to symbolize hope and the beginning of a new time. The crescent is the first sliver of moon seen after the new moon.
Words I Learned:
mellifluous = smooth and sweet
perspicacious = having penetrating mental discernment
sough = to make a soft murmuring or rustling sound
drakean8's review against another edition
3.0
In the characteristic middle-eastern style, this is a story within a story within a story. A little difficult to get into, but once I got going, I enjoyed it.
marlowek's review against another edition
2.0
This book was highly recommended and rated well, but I found the main character to be totally uninteresting. Well, she liked to cook, but that seemed to be all. She cooked lamb ... a lot. If you like reading about uninteresting people cooking lamb, read this book. Some other stuff happened too, but it wasn't interesting either.
zilfworks's review against another edition
4.0
I've read this twice now (once a couple of years ago and again just last month for our book group), and it definitely holds up on a second reading. Lovely writing, exquisite food descriptions (you'll get hungry!). My only quibble is with the final 20 pages or so, in which the author uses a very cliched gimmick to move the plot along...not once but twice. A move very out of character with the rest of the book, which is very well written in almost all other respects.