I didn’t realize how many characters this 308 page adult book has until I sat down to write this review. The slow peeling back of layers into their backstories, motivations, perspectives, and insecurities, makes you get to know them in a way that feels real and deep, but in no way can be succinctly explained in a review. First off to clarify, I feel the title is a bit of click bait, the djinn is there, but not a big part of the book, there is also a ghost, who is a more impactful character, so the vibe is more haunting than Islamic lens. In fact, a few characters are Muslim, but that is about it. The writing though, oh the writing is quite lovely and immersive. The culture of desi characters in South Africa, the slivers of colonization and caste that get commentary, and the heartache of all those who have called, and do call Akbar Manzil home, will linger even if the details fade over time. I listened to the audio book, so it is possible that triggers or flags might have been missed, for the most part the book is relatively clean, death, murder, attempted murder, and supernatural beings being the most obvious.
SYNOPSIS:
The main character is very much the grand estate of Akbar Manzil, a palatial home off the coast of South Africa that shaped lives and futures and hid horrors and loss. In modern times it has been subdivided into apartments where lives and futures are still shaped and horrors and loss are also hid, and hid from. When Sana and her father arrive to take up residence, the past and the present begin to unite, a djinn that has never left the house is stirred, and the more Sana pokes and prods, and the more she understands about the original inhabitants of the home, the more the house pushes back.
I don’t know how much to tell, as spoilers aren’t so easily defined in this book. The family in the past is a man from India, Akbar, who falls in love with the area, builds a house despite his wife hating it all and desperate to leave, opens a sugar factory, his mother comes to live with them, they have two children, servants, friends, he stocks the gardens with monkeys, giraffes, a lion, and then one day he is enamored by a Hindu worker, Meena, at the factory and takes her as his second wife. The jealously and family drama reaches a crescendo when she is pregnant and has a little boy. Beyond the family storyline is a djinn also enamored by Meena, who takes up residence in the house to be close to her.
In present times, the other tenants in the house have their own baggage, loss, regret, and fears that cause daily squabbles and plottings. Sana deals with the loss of her mother who hated her, and a dead sister who haunts her. There is also Pinky in love with Shah Rukh Khan, Zuleikha a former famous pianist who has lost her edge, the Doctor who owns the home, a mother waiting for her son to visit, a parrot named Mr. Patel, Fancy, Razia Bibi, and so on. The house is occupied, but hollow, not full, and the the lingering djinn seems to always lurk just beyond the surface, in the corners and shadows that haunt them all.
WHY I LIKE IT:
I like that the writing keeps you hooked, even at times when there is no rising action, or conflict, you are genuinely drawn in and invested in just learning about the characters and how their lives, both those in the past and the present, intersect. I didn’t like the fact that there is a djinn and a ghost, I feel like the ghost negates the realness that djinn. It is possible that the ghost was a metaphor, or symbolism, but it was a little off to me, to have both as I understood it. I don’t know how I feel about the vagueness of the final climax, yes I’m trying not to give anything away, but SPOILER: who set the fire?
FLAGS:
Loss, death, ghosts, djinn, murder, attempted murder, lying plotting, manipulation, music.
TOOLS FOR LEADING THE DISCUSSION:
I don’t know that this would work for an Islamic school book club, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work, but rather I need someone to discuss with me, so that I feel like I understood some of the lingering threads that are unresolved. Basically, I would need to have someone explain parts to me, before I could help 15-16 year olds and up make sense of it all.
Islamic School Librarian 