West of Mars

I’ve got a confession to make. While reading my book club’s latest selection, Laura Fitzgerald’s Veil of Roses, I got SO crazy with what was going on that …

I skipped to the end of the book to see what happened.

Yep. I peeked. I cheated. I couldn’t take being left to dangle in the story. I couldn’t trust the author to take me — and her characters — in the direction I really wanted them to go.

I haven’t done this in years.

Oh, sometimes I’ll look at the last sentence, or the last page — usually if I’m bored for some reason. Sometimes, I’ll keep referring to that last page to get the final number of pages in the book, and sometimes, I’ll catch a sentence here or there. I try to avoid anything that’ll give the ending away.

Not this time. I HAD to know. So… I peeked. Knowing the outcome took the edge away; you know that edge, the one where you can’t stand not knowing if the Happily Ever After is going to come or not. The one that actually hurts and keeps you from reading. Instead, you skim and, in this case, miss out on some incredibly poignant writing. I couldn’t let myself do that. I had to absorb all of this book.

I’ve spent a lot of time the past few days trying to figure out why I had to do this. Why the temptation to look was so absolutely overriding. And this is what I came up with:

Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Tami, comes from Iran. She’s been repressed and she knows it. Coming to America is her chance to escape all that, to reconnect with the fuzzy memories of the time her family spent here when she was young. She comes seeking the answers of who her mother had been back then, a woman who wore a pink bikini. The mother Tami knows… she can’t wear things like pink bikinis. And if she could, Tami’s not sure she would. Who is this mother in the picture? Tami needs to know.

Tami feels the pain of her repression. She says things like “Freedom means not even being aware you’re free” (p. 62). and “Feeling the sun on one’s body should be a basic human right afforded to all” (p. 185).

Such sweet sentences. Poignant. Piercing. Holding a weight of truth beyond much of anything I’ve read of late.

This is a woman who is fully aware of the horrors of the life she lives. When she doesn’t understand a free sample at Starbucks and coincidentally a pair of cops show up to feed their addiction, she panics, convinced she’s going to be arrested. Time and again, she compares the ease of life in America with the repression in Iran.

Her scars from this lifestyle, if one can call it that, are palpable. And Tami is so very likeable, we want to see her rise above this repression she came from. We need her to. This isn’t merely a story of a woman coming to America to find a husband. (In fact, when the idea of mail-order brides is raised, it’s quickly dropped.)

No, this is a story of good versus evil. Of the freedoms of democracy versus the evil oppressors of the world.

No wonder I had to peek.

(Stupid FTC shit since I suppose this is a review: I got this book through Paperbackswap.com so my book club can read it. I had no intentions of doing anything other than discussing it with those great ladies and adding it to the list of books we’ve read on the HBC page here. But the book demanded some exposure here on the Meet and Greet, and I’m all too glad to provide it. Oh, yeah. The buy links here and elsewhere on West of Mars? They all go to Powells.com so I can hopefully make a few bucks and buy books to give away. To you guys. My readers, not the FTC, who ought to read this book.)

(Another side note: I usually agree with Publisher’s Weekly reviews. That’s why I read them. However, I don’t agree that this book has a disposable plot — because for me, the plot becomes secondary to what’s really going on. I’m disappointed the reviewer couldn’t see that.)