Review by Booklist Review
Toutonghi's (Dong Gone, 2016) novel spans continents, years, and wars. In Aleppo in 2014, as control of the city shifts between Assad and the Free Syrian Army, teenage Naïm and his mother are the only survivors after a bomb hits their apartment building. They flee to a refugee camp in Jordan, where Naïm, a former piano prodigy, recovers from losing two fingers. In 1948 Beirut, Marguerite is a talented composer whose dreams to pursue a life in music conflict with her father's plans to have her marry a business partner's son and assure the success of the family tobacco business. Marguerite falls in love with a Cuban tobacco plantation owner's son, Adolfo, who offers her a different life. In 1958 Washington, DC, Annabel is recruited for a modeling job in Cuba that will change the course of her life. Naïm, Marguerite, and Annabel's lives intertwine across the decades, scarred by violence yet connected by music. Toutonghi's evocative prose captures the power of music and the ongoing struggles of grief.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
A Pushcart Prize--winning, first-generation U.S. author, Toutonghi (Red Weather; Dog Gone) here explores the immigration experience over time. In late 1940s Lebanon, talented young composer Marguerite Toutoungi (based on the author's cousin) is prevented by social stricture and family machinations from studying at the Conservatoire de Paris and instead follows politically like-minded Adolfo Jorge Castillo to Cuba, ultimately facing hard choices during the revolution. Over a half-century later, a bombing costs young Syrian piano prodigy Naïm Rahil both his dreams (one hand is damaged) and his entire family but for his mother, with whom he travels to the United States after spending time in a refugee camp. These two storylines are bridged by Annabel Crandell, whose transformation from canny, fun-seeking spokesmodel to social-justice crusader is an affecting story of its own. Throughout, whether figuratively or literally, Naïm awaits the return of his remaining family and, in a beautiful scene at book's end, senses the convergence of other presences from the past, with music as background. VERDICT Toutonghi places his characters in extreme situations where they face the complexities of right and wrong while showing readers how the past continues to reverberate in the present. Both thoughtful and seamlessly executed; a fine choice for book clubs.--Barbara Hoffert
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two refugees struggle to build new lives. As its title suggests, this novel is concerned with refugees. On one side, there's Naïm Rahil, a 14-year-old piano prodigy from current-day Aleppo whose left hand is mangled by shelling. On the other, there's Marguerite Toutoungi, born in 1925, the middle daughter of an elite Beirut family that made its fortune from tobacco. While her parents hope to marry her off, Marguerite longs only to study music at the Conservatoire de Paris; both plans are foiled when she falls in love with the son of a Cuban tobacco farmer. Late in the novel, of course, both halves of the story converge. The author's construction is awkward--haphazard, even--while his dialogue frequently feels overshadowed by Hollywood scripts in a way that seems completely divorced from the way people actually speak. After the event that destroys his hand and most of his family, Naïm wakes up in the hospital. " 'Where's Dad?' " he asks Fatima, his mother. "Fatima's gaze seemed to harden. She started to speak, then shook her head, cleared her throat, looked away. Her implication was clear. 'Anyone?' he asked. She shook her head slightly." The scene wouldn't be out of place in an action movie, but that doesn't seem to have been Toutonghi's intent. Then, too, he has a habit of using current-day standards to evaluate things that would have preceded those standards--as, for example, when Marguerite considers that "her work had been validated." It's the early 20th century, and Marguerite is in Beirut: Would she really use validation language? A novel that sags under the weight of improbable dialogue, two-dimensional characters, and various anachronisms. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
