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Bangla Desh #3
عظام المجد
في عشية رحيلها للبحث عن عظام الحوت السائر –الحفرية التي تُشكِّل حلقة الوصل المفقودة في تطور البشر– تقع زبيدة حق في حُب إيلاجا سترونج؛ رجلٌ التقته في قاعة حفلات موسيقية مُعتمة في بوسطن. تتولد بينهما علاقةٌ جامحة في الحال على اختلافهما: إذ ينتمي إيلاجا إلى عائلة أمريكية نمطية، وزبيدة هي الابنة المتبنَّاة لعائلة بنجلاديشية ثرية في دكَّا. ولمَّا تُعيدها مُجريات القدر إلى ديارها، تُجبرها القوة الغاشمة في مجتمعها على اتخاذ طريقٍ مختلفٍ جدًّا، فتتزوجُ صديق طفولتها وتعتاد الحياة البنجلاديشية التقليدية.
تستحسن العائلة خضوع زبيدة، وفي الآن نفسه تهيج زبيدة بالسخط. وفي رغبةٍ يائسة للتحرر أخيرًا من قيود العائلة، تنتقل إلى شيتاجونج للعمل على فيلمٍ وثائقي عن الشطآن المغمورة حيث تُـمارس حرفة تفكيك السفن، يظهر أنور، وهو عامل في تفكيك السفن، تحمل قصته مفتاحًا سيكشف عن أسرارٍ غامضة في ماضي زبيدة واحتمالات لحياةٍ جديدة.
ومع تفكيك السفينة حتى آخر أجزائها، تصبح زبيدة ممزقة هي الأخرى بين الأعراف الاجتماعية لدارين –بنجلاديش وأمريكا– وستُضطر إلى تعرية حياتها الخاصة... لتتخذ قرارًا لن تعود فيه أبدًا.
تستحسن العائلة خضوع زبيدة، وفي الآن نفسه تهيج زبيدة بالسخط. وفي رغبةٍ يائسة للتحرر أخيرًا من قيود العائلة، تنتقل إلى شيتاجونج للعمل على فيلمٍ وثائقي عن الشطآن المغمورة حيث تُـمارس حرفة تفكيك السفن، يظهر أنور، وهو عامل في تفكيك السفن، تحمل قصته مفتاحًا سيكشف عن أسرارٍ غامضة في ماضي زبيدة واحتمالات لحياةٍ جديدة.
ومع تفكيك السفينة حتى آخر أجزائها، تصبح زبيدة ممزقة هي الأخرى بين الأعراف الاجتماعية لدارين –بنجلاديش وأمريكا– وستُضطر إلى تعرية حياتها الخاصة... لتتخذ قرارًا لن تعود فيه أبدًا.
384 pages, Paperback
First published May 18, 2016
About the author
Tahmima Anam
20 books646 followersTahmima Anam is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Granta Best Young British Novelist, and winner of a Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her work has been published in Granta, The New York Times, and The Guardian. She was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and lives in London, where she is on the board of ROLI, a music technology startup founded by her husband.
The Startup Wife (07/13/2021) is her latest novel.
The Startup Wife (07/13/2021) is her latest novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 159 reviews
September 1, 2016
The story centers around an adopted daughter of a loving Bengali family who finds herself lost between worlds. Zubaidah Haque experiences a liberated life at Harvard where she becomes a paleontologist, participates in a dig at Baluchistan, Pakistan, to search for the walking whale,Ambulocetus, and then move back to Bangladesh to get married to her childhood friend, Rashid. She leaves behind the love of her life. The book is an epistle to Elijah Strong in which the explains her decisions to him. She struggles to find her footing in life as a result of her history as an adopted child, the country's political upheavals, and the cultural anomalies between her adopted country and her motherland.
The text is atmospheric, rich, intense, captivating, spicy, strong, lyrical, written with a melancholic elegance. The narrative is fundamentally beautiful. Historical fiction reigns supreme. The love story pulls all the events and issues together, instead of being a mainstream diluted untruth for love-addicts. Hardships, tragedy, resilience, pride, loyalty, family values, social inequalities, and cultural treasures vividly fill up the pages with colorful vistas.
British novelist, Tahmima Anam, concludes the Bengal trilogy with this book covering the history of Bangladesh's freedom struggle and revolution. I accidentally started out with this book, instead of the first book, A Golden Age. The second book in the series is titled The Good Muslim. The series addresses the history of a grandmother, a daughter and then the adopted granddaughter in the ever changing political arena of the country. In this respect it reminds me of Wild Swans - Three daughters of China by Jung Chang.
I am a bit between a rock and a hard place with this book. I really enjoyed the experience, however ...
... it left me exhausted instead of inspired. Somewhere along the road, it lost me in too much word dumping, too many characters and an overall messiness in texture and scope. Although it was highly informative, it also tried to cover too many issues, turning the drama into mediocre overkill. Even the ending became one long unnecessary explanation of the obvious. That's a personal opinion.
It could have been a powerful tour de force. However, someone killed the possibility and it was not the reader. Instead of 'WOW!' at the last concluding sentence, it ended with 'Thank You Universe it's finally over!' - for me, at least. Someone should have told the protagonist to just stop talking. A good editor, for instance. But that's just me.
However, curiosity will not only kill a few cats. Somewhere along the line, I want to read the other two books in this series as well. Yes, figure that one out!
The text is atmospheric, rich, intense, captivating, spicy, strong, lyrical, written with a melancholic elegance. The narrative is fundamentally beautiful. Historical fiction reigns supreme. The love story pulls all the events and issues together, instead of being a mainstream diluted untruth for love-addicts. Hardships, tragedy, resilience, pride, loyalty, family values, social inequalities, and cultural treasures vividly fill up the pages with colorful vistas.
British novelist, Tahmima Anam, concludes the Bengal trilogy with this book covering the history of Bangladesh's freedom struggle and revolution. I accidentally started out with this book, instead of the first book, A Golden Age. The second book in the series is titled The Good Muslim. The series addresses the history of a grandmother, a daughter and then the adopted granddaughter in the ever changing political arena of the country. In this respect it reminds me of Wild Swans - Three daughters of China by Jung Chang.
I am a bit between a rock and a hard place with this book. I really enjoyed the experience, however ...
... it left me exhausted instead of inspired. Somewhere along the road, it lost me in too much word dumping, too many characters and an overall messiness in texture and scope. Although it was highly informative, it also tried to cover too many issues, turning the drama into mediocre overkill. Even the ending became one long unnecessary explanation of the obvious. That's a personal opinion.
It could have been a powerful tour de force. However, someone killed the possibility and it was not the reader. Instead of 'WOW!' at the last concluding sentence, it ended with 'Thank You Universe it's finally over!' - for me, at least. Someone should have told the protagonist to just stop talking. A good editor, for instance. But that's just me.
However, curiosity will not only kill a few cats. Somewhere along the line, I want to read the other two books in this series as well. Yes, figure that one out!
May 1, 2016
This book is beautiful and lyrical, it feels like someone is reading you the secrets of their soul. Each sentence is musical, yet thoroughly conversational, so that it reads as a halting, emotional confession, full of additions and qualifications. It's so personal that I followed the story with a tightness in my chest and sometimes tears in my eyes.
Tahmima Anam is a real talent, not just in style but in her creation of character. So rarely do I leave a book believing that I know a person so thoroughly, that I understand their choices so well. She addresses the tensions in individual identity; how someone can be pulled in opposing directions by love, culture, science, history.
I didn't realise that this was the last part of a trilogy. As powerful as this was alone, I'm looking forward to reading the others and adding an even richer sense of the past to this generational story.
Many thanks to Tahmima Anam, Canongate Books, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
Tahmima Anam is a real talent, not just in style but in her creation of character. So rarely do I leave a book believing that I know a person so thoroughly, that I understand their choices so well. She addresses the tensions in individual identity; how someone can be pulled in opposing directions by love, culture, science, history.
I didn't realise that this was the last part of a trilogy. As powerful as this was alone, I'm looking forward to reading the others and adding an even richer sense of the past to this generational story.
Many thanks to Tahmima Anam, Canongate Books, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
May 4, 2016
To be honest, I read this book some time ago but in the midst of the chaos that is my life, forgot to write the review. This is a beautifully and lyrically written novel about a woman's search for who she really is given that she is adopted and caught between two cultures. She is based in the US and is a paleontologist looking to understand who she is. In a compelling narrative, the tale penetrates what are the deepest parts of a human being. Inevitably, that touches on love and family. She wants to get in touch on her Bangladeshi connections. So we encounter issues of class and culture whilst coming to terms with the past and the present. The characterisation is done well and invested with emotional intensity and insights. A book to savour! Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
May 15, 2016
“You realise, don’t you, Elijah, that this is the way you worked your way into my heart? Not just in those days together in Cambridge, but in the aftermath, when I couldn’t stop talking about you, when every turn of my story included a footnote of conversation as I pictured how you might respond, the way the desert light would catch your hair, the effect of the parched, history-heavy air on your voice. What would you have made of all this, the green flags of our tents on the lunar surface of this ancient place, our little argument with time”
The Bones of Grace is the final book in the loosely connected Bengal trilogy by British Bangladeshi writer, novelist and columnist, Tahmima Anam. Zubaida Haque is writing to the man she fell in love with one Cambridge afternoon at a Shostakovich Preludes concert. Elijah Strong is not the man she married, but Zubaida is writing to explain what led to her the actions that she knows broke his heart.
The story she tells, parts of which he of course knows well, details their first meeting, just days before she departed for an archaeological dig in Pakistan. As a palaeontologist, Zubaida has been selected to help unearth the bones of the “walking whale”, Ambulocetus, near a remote village. But events conspire to put her back in her hometown, Dhaka, much sooner than expected, and she finds the pressure to enter into the expected marriage, too much to resist.
Anam’s extensive research into many topics is apparent on every page and she manages to include a myriad of interesting subjects in her narrative: as well as the evolution of the whale and archaeology digs, she explores the industry of ship-breaking, the plight of ex-pat construction workers in Dubai, undocumented adoption and the search for a birth mother, and for a long-lost lover. She weaves a wealth of curious facts into a plot that itself is mesmerising, and does so with some gorgeous descriptive prose.
“The light came in as we waited, and then there it was, a sliver on the horizon. We watched as it grew. More of the men arrived, wiping the sleep from their eyes. The curve of the ship began to appear, and now we could see the gleam of the hull, a poem of curves rising out of the remnants of dark, and suddenly it was before us, as if it had turned a sharp corner, white, immense, violent” and “She is a person with guilt at the very core of her being, and she spends her days compensating others for the fortune that brought her a life, a marriage, me. She is a moral economy all to herself, painted in tiny strokes of the past” are examples.
Anam’s characters are multifaceted, all have flaws, and the reader cannot help but care about their fate. While this novel is part of a trilogy, it can easily be read as a stand-alone, but readers are likely to want to seek out the earlier books by this talented author. A brilliant read.
The Bones of Grace is the final book in the loosely connected Bengal trilogy by British Bangladeshi writer, novelist and columnist, Tahmima Anam. Zubaida Haque is writing to the man she fell in love with one Cambridge afternoon at a Shostakovich Preludes concert. Elijah Strong is not the man she married, but Zubaida is writing to explain what led to her the actions that she knows broke his heart.
The story she tells, parts of which he of course knows well, details their first meeting, just days before she departed for an archaeological dig in Pakistan. As a palaeontologist, Zubaida has been selected to help unearth the bones of the “walking whale”, Ambulocetus, near a remote village. But events conspire to put her back in her hometown, Dhaka, much sooner than expected, and she finds the pressure to enter into the expected marriage, too much to resist.
Anam’s extensive research into many topics is apparent on every page and she manages to include a myriad of interesting subjects in her narrative: as well as the evolution of the whale and archaeology digs, she explores the industry of ship-breaking, the plight of ex-pat construction workers in Dubai, undocumented adoption and the search for a birth mother, and for a long-lost lover. She weaves a wealth of curious facts into a plot that itself is mesmerising, and does so with some gorgeous descriptive prose.
“The light came in as we waited, and then there it was, a sliver on the horizon. We watched as it grew. More of the men arrived, wiping the sleep from their eyes. The curve of the ship began to appear, and now we could see the gleam of the hull, a poem of curves rising out of the remnants of dark, and suddenly it was before us, as if it had turned a sharp corner, white, immense, violent” and “She is a person with guilt at the very core of her being, and she spends her days compensating others for the fortune that brought her a life, a marriage, me. She is a moral economy all to herself, painted in tiny strokes of the past” are examples.
Anam’s characters are multifaceted, all have flaws, and the reader cannot help but care about their fate. While this novel is part of a trilogy, it can easily be read as a stand-alone, but readers are likely to want to seek out the earlier books by this talented author. A brilliant read.
February 22, 2022
A profoundly moving novel about a woman’s search for identity amidst the clash of cultures and the expectations of family. Zubaida is the adopted daughter of Maya and Joy whom we met in A Golden Age. Her generation lives in the shadow of parents who fought in the revolutionary war and helped to win independence for Bangladesh.
At the beginning of the novel, Zubaida is at Harvard working on her PhD in marine palaeontology. It has always been expected that she will marry her childhood friend, Rashid, and so meeting Elijah sows seeds of doubts in her that she didn’t consciously know existed. In addition, she longs to know who her real parents are. On her eventual return to Bangladesh, she goes to the Chittagong beaches to a shipbreakers’ yard to help a documentary maker tell the story of the dangerous work carried out there which results in almost daily fatalities. For more information, see
https://shipbreakingplatform.org/our-... I was horrified to learn about this work and the exploitation of its workers, mostly poor farmers from the north of the country.
I found this a slow read but a very thoughtful one. Much of the prose has a tender beauty that speaks of the author’s insight into the joys of finding your soul mate. This is the third book in the trilogy but can easily be read out of sequence.
4.5 stars. So nearly 5 if I hadn’t found it such slow going, particularly early on when I wondered just where it was headed and found the timeline a little confusing. I’m very pleased that I stuck with it as it’s a beautiful story.
At the beginning of the novel, Zubaida is at Harvard working on her PhD in marine palaeontology. It has always been expected that she will marry her childhood friend, Rashid, and so meeting Elijah sows seeds of doubts in her that she didn’t consciously know existed. In addition, she longs to know who her real parents are. On her eventual return to Bangladesh, she goes to the Chittagong beaches to a shipbreakers’ yard to help a documentary maker tell the story of the dangerous work carried out there which results in almost daily fatalities. For more information, see
https://shipbreakingplatform.org/our-... I was horrified to learn about this work and the exploitation of its workers, mostly poor farmers from the north of the country.
I found this a slow read but a very thoughtful one. Much of the prose has a tender beauty that speaks of the author’s insight into the joys of finding your soul mate. This is the third book in the trilogy but can easily be read out of sequence.
4.5 stars. So nearly 5 if I hadn’t found it such slow going, particularly early on when I wondered just where it was headed and found the timeline a little confusing. I’m very pleased that I stuck with it as it’s a beautiful story.
Read
June 29, 2016Zubaida is a student in Cambridge when she falls for Elijah, but the stars are not aligned for the star-crossed lovers, and she returns to her country to follow her family’s plans for her future. Disheartened and stifled by her decision, she moves to the beaches of Chittagong to work on a documentary and seek the remains of “the walking whale.” The Bones of Grace is a deeply moving novel of love, immigration, and loss, moving from Boston to India and back again, that will sweep you away with its beautiful language and sad, lovely story.
Backlist bump: A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/listen/shows/allt...
Backlist bump: A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/listen/shows/allt...
June 3, 2018
3.5★
The third part of the Bangla Desh trilogy brings us the story of the third generation of the Haque family; Rehana's granddaughter and Maya's daughter, Zubaida. We originally met Zubaida very briefly during the epilogue of The Good Muslim, so that's where I started, re-reading that part to recalibrate my familiarity with the characters.
As this story begins, PhD candidate Zubaida is preparing to leave Harvard to join an expedition in Pakistan to dig up a whale fossil; the skeleton of Ambulocetus natans, the walking whale. In her final week she meets Elijah Strong, a drop-out from the university's Philosophy doctoral program. Despite Zee's departure hanging over them, and her admission that she is promised to someone else, the two fall a bit in love and vow to keep in touch.
The excavation in Pakistan is unexpectedly cut short, and Zee returns to her family in Dhaka, rudderless. There she decides to move ahead with the marriage to her childhood friend, Rashid, and put her feelings for Elijah behind her. Early on in the marriage, tragedy strikes, and this is the catalyst for Zee relocating to Chittagong without Rashid. Within a short time she finds herself with an unexpected job opportunity - helping a foreign crew making a documentary about the labourers working in the ship-breaking industry along the coast. There Zee meets Mo and Anwar, and through circumstances of her own making, once again comes into Elijah's orbit.
There is another storyline about Zee being adopted that is equally as important as the Elijah thread, but it's difficult for me to explain how this fits in without spoilers. Suffice to say, Zee was told she was adopted on her 9th birthday and then it was never mentioned again. As she struggles to reconcile her feelings for Rashid and Elijah, she almost tries to distract herself with a growing desire to find out where she came from and who her mother is.
For me, this book was not as good as #1, but distinctly more enjoyable than #2. I would have rated it higher but for the fact that I just wasn't convinced by the depth of feeling that Zubaida supposedly had for Elijah and also for her need to understand her background. For example, she called it her 'quest' at a point where all she had really done was ask a few questions of her parents and in-laws. It seemed more like a curiosity than a quest to me. And with Elijah, there was tenderness and affection but none of the hallmarks of a grand passion that disrupts lives. However, while it looked to be heading towards a solid 3★ read, what redeemed it and earned the extra half★ was the ending. So much happened in the last 10% of the book!
But now I'm having mixed feelings because after I'd settled on a rating, another reviewer brought to my attention a book named The Geometry of God, written by a Pakistani writer and published in 2008 (7 or 8 years before The Bones of Grace). Anam hasn't acknowledged either the book or the author, and I find I'm thinking less of her for it.
The third part of the Bangla Desh trilogy brings us the story of the third generation of the Haque family; Rehana's granddaughter and Maya's daughter, Zubaida. We originally met Zubaida very briefly during the epilogue of The Good Muslim, so that's where I started, re-reading that part to recalibrate my familiarity with the characters.
As this story begins, PhD candidate Zubaida is preparing to leave Harvard to join an expedition in Pakistan to dig up a whale fossil; the skeleton of Ambulocetus natans, the walking whale. In her final week she meets Elijah Strong, a drop-out from the university's Philosophy doctoral program. Despite Zee's departure hanging over them, and her admission that she is promised to someone else, the two fall a bit in love and vow to keep in touch.
The excavation in Pakistan is unexpectedly cut short, and Zee returns to her family in Dhaka, rudderless. There she decides to move ahead with the marriage to her childhood friend, Rashid, and put her feelings for Elijah behind her. Early on in the marriage, tragedy strikes, and this is the catalyst for Zee relocating to Chittagong without Rashid. Within a short time she finds herself with an unexpected job opportunity - helping a foreign crew making a documentary about the labourers working in the ship-breaking industry along the coast. There Zee meets Mo and Anwar, and through circumstances of her own making, once again comes into Elijah's orbit.
There is another storyline about Zee being adopted that is equally as important as the Elijah thread, but it's difficult for me to explain how this fits in without spoilers. Suffice to say, Zee was told she was adopted on her 9th birthday and then it was never mentioned again. As she struggles to reconcile her feelings for Rashid and Elijah, she almost tries to distract herself with a growing desire to find out where she came from and who her mother is.
For me, this book was not as good as #1, but distinctly more enjoyable than #2. I would have rated it higher but for the fact that I just wasn't convinced by the depth of feeling that Zubaida supposedly had for Elijah and also for her need to understand her background. For example, she called it her 'quest' at a point where all she had really done was ask a few questions of her parents and in-laws. It seemed more like a curiosity than a quest to me. And with Elijah, there was tenderness and affection but none of the hallmarks of a grand passion that disrupts lives. However, while it looked to be heading towards a solid 3★ read, what redeemed it and earned the extra half★ was the ending. So much happened in the last 10% of the book!
But now I'm having mixed feelings because after I'd settled on a rating, another reviewer brought to my attention a book named The Geometry of God, written by a Pakistani writer and published in 2008 (7 or 8 years before The Bones of Grace). Anam hasn't acknowledged either the book or the author, and I find I'm thinking less of her for it.
July 6, 2016
THis book is so much like The Geometry of God by Uzma Aslam Khan that I am shocked. I confess to not having finished it because of the similiarities. In The Geometry of God,which came out in 2008, a young girl Amal finds the fossil of an ancient whale, the 'dog-whale,' that evoloved on land, with legs. She finds it on a dig in Pakistan with her grandfather, a paleontologist whose name is Zahoor, whose names means 'becoming', evolving, in-between. Amal wants to be a paleontologist like her grandfather but is told to stay home to look after her blind sister. But she does end up becoming the first woman paleontologist in Pakistan, working with men, despite society and family pressure. Tell me if this doesn't sound familiar. The Geometry of God was a Kirkus Reviews best book of 2009 but it seems not many people here have heard of it or the 'coincidence' would have been noted. I will give you that their writing styles aren't the same, but, ironically, Khan wrote this on pp 212 of the US edition of The Geometry of God "Suppose I reassemble the bones wrong and the copy in no way resembles the original? Thousands of people will carry an image in their head of a prototype that never was."
The prototype for a book about a South Asian woman paleontologist who studes ancienct whales and the wider themes of how her interest in this in-between creature is because it is like her, and like others in the book, and like young nation-states of South Asia themselves, is The Geometry of God. It just has to be said. :(
The prototype for a book about a South Asian woman paleontologist who studes ancienct whales and the wider themes of how her interest in this in-between creature is because it is like her, and like others in the book, and like young nation-states of South Asia themselves, is The Geometry of God. It just has to be said. :(
February 6, 2017
Written in luminous prose and suffused with an air of yearning and melancholy, this follows Zubaida from a PhD at Harvard via an aborted archeological dig in Pakistan to her home in Bangladesh. Anam weaves a complex story of journeying and search: for history, for a sense of self, for acceptance and for homecoming. Along the way we have a glorious portrait of a love affair, of various marriages, and of Bangladesh: its hierarchical social structures, its past struggle for independence, its abuses and its beauties.
What makes this book so impressive is Anam's narrative control and her ability to view the world and characters with complexity rather than reductively. It's a mark of her sophisticated vision that the place of greatest human abuse is also where Zubaida experiences her greatest happiness; that the haunting image of the skeleton of a prehistoric whale is matched by the vision of a ship being stripped back to its bare timbers beached on the sand.
It can be difficult to create empathy for a protagonist who is inclined to passivity but here, too, Anam pulls it off: Zubaida's motivations are sometimes opaque but its precisely this quality which makes her feel so real. A gorgeous, graceful piece of writing that confirms Anam as a writer to watch.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
What makes this book so impressive is Anam's narrative control and her ability to view the world and characters with complexity rather than reductively. It's a mark of her sophisticated vision that the place of greatest human abuse is also where Zubaida experiences her greatest happiness; that the haunting image of the skeleton of a prehistoric whale is matched by the vision of a ship being stripped back to its bare timbers beached on the sand.
It can be difficult to create empathy for a protagonist who is inclined to passivity but here, too, Anam pulls it off: Zubaida's motivations are sometimes opaque but its precisely this quality which makes her feel so real. A gorgeous, graceful piece of writing that confirms Anam as a writer to watch.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
August 8, 2016
So disappointed about this! I have loved the previous two books in this series and I had sky high hopes for this one, but this was so chaotic and convoluted and not good! The writing was great and honestly the only saving grace of this book. I couldn't stand Zubaida! I disliked her immensely and by the end of the book I want to get inside the story and slap her! Ugh! No!!! This was a train wreck!
February 3, 2017
‘A major new talent.’
Observer
‘Anam’s prose is glowing and graceful.’
Guardian
‘Anam has a knack for making you care so desperately for her characters that you admire their failings as much as their strengths.’
Daily Mail
‘Anam deftly weaves the personal and the political, giving the terrors of war spare, powerful treatment.’
New Yorker
‘Fierce and intimate, lyrical and expansive, The Bones of Grace offers what a great novel does: symphonic movements, historical landscapes that shape our private landscapes of love and life, mysteries and enchantments, the unforgettable and the unforgotten. Tahmima Anam is a mesmerizer.’
Yiyun Li, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
‘Expansive yet intimate, weighty yet incisively funny, The Bones of Grace is a powerful examination of what it means to live in a world of collapsing boundaries and conflicting values. Few people write about identity and culture with such elegance and intelligence as Tahmima Anam.’
Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire
‘A novel of heart, brain, and muscle – the competing pulls of history and love are evoked here with a rare honesty, and great skill.’
Kamila Shamsie, author of A God in Every Stone
‘Intricately structured, [The Bones of Grace] attempts to reassemble all its floating clues and end at its starting point, with its heroine reconstructing an elliptical past and searching for an elusive future…the story is speckled with anecdotes from the history of a country both young and very old.’
Guardian
‘[Anam] weaves a wealth of curious facts into a plot that itself is mesmerising, and does so with some gorgeous descriptive prose…[Her] characters are multifaceted, all have flaws, and the reader cannot help but care about their fate…A brilliant read.’
BookMooch
‘A novel of unusual, uneven beauty, heart-wrenching sadness and rare imaginative power.’
Daily Star
‘A twisting, fantastical tale of fate, chance and opportunities missed…Anam’s chief strength as a novelist is her knack for richly detailed and peopled worlds…We are taken on a meandering carpet ride through some exotic and surprising places, and there’s much to be enjoyed in that.’
Australian
‘The Bones of Grace has at its heart not war but the shattering effects of conflicted love…Zubaida's choice between love and duty is reminiscent of Anna Karenina’ Financial Times
‘A novel of heart, brain, and muscle – the competing pulls of history and love are evoked here with a rare honesty, and great skill.’
Kamila Shamsie
‘Restrained and powerful.’
Observer
‘Seemingly disparate stories slowly coming together one by one, until the moment a last piece clicks sweetly into place to give us the revelation of a perfect, satisfying whole.’
Spectator
‘Few people write about identity and culture with such elegance and intelligence as Tahmima Anam.’
Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire
‘Anam has created a novel that looks honestly at cultural history, family ties, religion, honour, and secrets, it is both intimate and expansive, achingly sad yet insightfully witty. Literature at its best opens doors and with The Bones of Grace Tahmima Anam does just that.’
Hair Past a Freckle
Observer
‘Anam’s prose is glowing and graceful.’
Guardian
‘Anam has a knack for making you care so desperately for her characters that you admire their failings as much as their strengths.’
Daily Mail
‘Anam deftly weaves the personal and the political, giving the terrors of war spare, powerful treatment.’
New Yorker
‘Fierce and intimate, lyrical and expansive, The Bones of Grace offers what a great novel does: symphonic movements, historical landscapes that shape our private landscapes of love and life, mysteries and enchantments, the unforgettable and the unforgotten. Tahmima Anam is a mesmerizer.’
Yiyun Li, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
‘Expansive yet intimate, weighty yet incisively funny, The Bones of Grace is a powerful examination of what it means to live in a world of collapsing boundaries and conflicting values. Few people write about identity and culture with such elegance and intelligence as Tahmima Anam.’
Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire
‘A novel of heart, brain, and muscle – the competing pulls of history and love are evoked here with a rare honesty, and great skill.’
Kamila Shamsie, author of A God in Every Stone
‘Intricately structured, [The Bones of Grace] attempts to reassemble all its floating clues and end at its starting point, with its heroine reconstructing an elliptical past and searching for an elusive future…the story is speckled with anecdotes from the history of a country both young and very old.’
Guardian
‘[Anam] weaves a wealth of curious facts into a plot that itself is mesmerising, and does so with some gorgeous descriptive prose…[Her] characters are multifaceted, all have flaws, and the reader cannot help but care about their fate…A brilliant read.’
BookMooch
‘A novel of unusual, uneven beauty, heart-wrenching sadness and rare imaginative power.’
Daily Star
‘A twisting, fantastical tale of fate, chance and opportunities missed…Anam’s chief strength as a novelist is her knack for richly detailed and peopled worlds…We are taken on a meandering carpet ride through some exotic and surprising places, and there’s much to be enjoyed in that.’
Australian
‘The Bones of Grace has at its heart not war but the shattering effects of conflicted love…Zubaida's choice between love and duty is reminiscent of Anna Karenina’ Financial Times
‘A novel of heart, brain, and muscle – the competing pulls of history and love are evoked here with a rare honesty, and great skill.’
Kamila Shamsie
‘Restrained and powerful.’
Observer
‘Seemingly disparate stories slowly coming together one by one, until the moment a last piece clicks sweetly into place to give us the revelation of a perfect, satisfying whole.’
Spectator
‘Few people write about identity and culture with such elegance and intelligence as Tahmima Anam.’
Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire
‘Anam has created a novel that looks honestly at cultural history, family ties, religion, honour, and secrets, it is both intimate and expansive, achingly sad yet insightfully witty. Literature at its best opens doors and with The Bones of Grace Tahmima Anam does just that.’
Hair Past a Freckle
April 26, 2016
I slowed down my reading of this book in the last few pages because I didn't want it to end. From the moment you start reading you know there can be no happy ending - there is just too much 'human' in this book for any convenient, Hollywood resolution.
Seemingly about a long distance love between a wholesome American and a Bangladeshi palaeontologist (stick with me here..) this book traverses the world and through time to conjure Bangladesh in colourful yet brutal beauty. I think this book is actually about the conflicts of identity experienced by everyone, but especially by those who leave behind their country to embrace cultures elsewhere. It's also about the idea that some people have 'dreams that are too big for their life'. Aspiration and ambition are concepts which many of us see as positive, but for those who have absolutely no chance or hope of changing their situation they simply lead to unhappiness, dissatisfaction, or worse.
By no means fast paced, there are enough unexpected twists and heart stopping moments to make this much more than the love story it seems to have been billed as in the publishers blurb. Along with some brilliant writing, unusual elements such as the exploration of ship breaking, an industry I literally had no idea existed, and some palaeontology science make this a satisfying and wholly unique novel.
Thanks to netgalley for providing me with an arc copy in return for an honest review.
Seemingly about a long distance love between a wholesome American and a Bangladeshi palaeontologist (stick with me here..) this book traverses the world and through time to conjure Bangladesh in colourful yet brutal beauty. I think this book is actually about the conflicts of identity experienced by everyone, but especially by those who leave behind their country to embrace cultures elsewhere. It's also about the idea that some people have 'dreams that are too big for their life'. Aspiration and ambition are concepts which many of us see as positive, but for those who have absolutely no chance or hope of changing their situation they simply lead to unhappiness, dissatisfaction, or worse.
By no means fast paced, there are enough unexpected twists and heart stopping moments to make this much more than the love story it seems to have been billed as in the publishers blurb. Along with some brilliant writing, unusual elements such as the exploration of ship breaking, an industry I literally had no idea existed, and some palaeontology science make this a satisfying and wholly unique novel.
Thanks to netgalley for providing me with an arc copy in return for an honest review.
October 22, 2016
How did this happen? Ms. Anam's first novel "A Golden Age" was a surprise 5* read. I hadn't heard anything about the book or the author at that time, just picked it up at the library and was thrilled. I was so excited when her 2nd book "The Good Muslim" appeared on the scene. I didn't like it that much because I'm pretty disgusted by religious zealotry, most certainly when it is used as an excuse to control women, but gave it a 4* because, well it seemed unfair to rate it lower than that. But "The Bones of Grace"? The main character was the most privileged, spoiled, selfish woman who had so many pretensions that she was above the shallow, materialistic, pampered class that she was adopted into. The premise of the novel, a story written for a love lost by the protagonist's cowardice and indecision: yuck, maudlin, boring, who cares! By the last tenth of the book, I just wanted a bomb or plane crash to kill off this woman and end it, already. If you like to read fantasies about the sad, self-inflicted psycho-dramas of the 1% , this is the book for you.
February 26, 2017
Despite my ratings, I will recommend Anam's trilogy on several accounts -- (1) it uses the trope of home and belonging as a subsequent reality of colonialism and warfare very well (though I am a bit sick of it), (2) good introduction to contemporary Bangladeshi fiction, (3) occasional bursts of lyricism (especially in this third book) which makes it simultaneously an easy and harder read than the previous two books (okay wait, that's not exactly a good point?)
Find a more detailed (albeit misleadingly flattering) review here:
http://openroadreview.com/tahmima-anam/
Find a more detailed (albeit misleadingly flattering) review here:
http://openroadreview.com/tahmima-anam/
April 30, 2020
"...this is why I loved you, because even the worst of the world was there to be discovered together, shoulder to shoulder with you, my beloved stranger.
i understand now why some people said this book was almost lyrical, lithe. almost epistolary. what struck me the most is how this was undeniably written from the very vessels of the heart.
i was kinda expecting more of a historical fiction-focused writing and storyline here, but the romance and the moral dialogues was beyond me. so different from the previous two books, and i am not complaining. the romance! ugh! it's like reading the lyrics of a song, how effortlessly touching!
i understand now why some people said this book was almost lyrical, lithe. almost epistolary. what struck me the most is how this was undeniably written from the very vessels of the heart.
i was kinda expecting more of a historical fiction-focused writing and storyline here, but the romance and the moral dialogues was beyond me. so different from the previous two books, and i am not complaining. the romance! ugh! it's like reading the lyrics of a song, how effortlessly touching!
December 25, 2018
Not my usual choice but was intrigued by the title. Started off slowly but was good.
March 13, 2017
I was long looking forward to Anam's third book in this 'trilogy' but though I enjoyed the book from the beginning - she is a masterful storyteller, of that there is no doubt - I was, nonetheless, a little disappointed.
Firstly, the book really didn't seem to be part of the trilogy at all. I could see no connection between this and her 'A Golden Age' and 'The Good Muslim'.
Secondly, it felt very much as if this was a series of longer short stories masquerading as a single novel. One moment we're involved in the love life of the main character and narrator, Zubaida. Then we're on an adventure looking for the bones of a long dead whale. Then suddenly we're ship-breaking on the beaches of Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh. Along the way we seem to randomly learn the story of Anwar - of whom I expected there to be an obvious sting in the tale, but it wasn't to be. These all felt like good ideas which ran out of steam and were then discarded by the author.
Nevertheless, I loved the storytelling and Anam's usual easy style which weaves you into the lives of the characters so gracefully. So I carried on, setting aside my hopes for the book in the wake of her first two excellent novels.
If, in reading this book, you feel the same disappointments then I must say: Keep going!
As the book neared the end, the threads pulled together and, instead of separate pictures roughly sown together as I expected, it turned out that everything made one larger picture - and that picture was beautiful.
For me, the test of a good novel is this: Do I care what happens to the characters in the future? Do I feel I don't want the story to end? Anam's book passes this test with flying colours. I was heartbroken when the story had to end and I have found it hard to extract myself from the lives of the players within ever since.
If truth be told, I would probably rate this 4.5 rather than a full 5/5 as it is not absolutely perfect. There are one or two messy bits, one or two parts which I didn't feel tied up completely or added to the novel. But then, in one sense, that's just what Anam is writing about here. An imperfect world, with imperfect people and imperfect love. Nothing has to add up completely to make a perfect sum.
Indeed, a refreshing change is the complete absence of genuine 'bad guys' in this story. There are less flawed characters and more flawed characters - each with their own good and bad points. This was especially true of the narrator herself who readily admits to being a coward and breaking the heart of Elijah, who deserved so much better (although he himself is flawed, revealing a selfish youth just a little at one point). While many novels today are taking the 'flawed hero' line, Anam's book succeeds with me because usually I find myself unsympathetic to such characters, but not here. Zubaida's plight and her thoughts and reactions I could understand and appreciate. She is not entirely unlike me, I thought throughout the story. Perhaps that is why I loved her so much.
In short, this is a beautiful book full of Bangladeshi life, full of the reality of what that means yet also so full of hope, peace and love. The enigma of Bangladesh is that it is both a beautiful place and a terrible one; born of a history which is both tragic and inspiring. Anam manages to capture this dual, split-personality of the country and people absolutely perfectly. For that, she demands my highest praise and my deepest thanks.
Firstly, the book really didn't seem to be part of the trilogy at all. I could see no connection between this and her 'A Golden Age' and 'The Good Muslim'.
Secondly, it felt very much as if this was a series of longer short stories masquerading as a single novel. One moment we're involved in the love life of the main character and narrator, Zubaida. Then we're on an adventure looking for the bones of a long dead whale. Then suddenly we're ship-breaking on the beaches of Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh. Along the way we seem to randomly learn the story of Anwar - of whom I expected there to be an obvious sting in the tale, but it wasn't to be. These all felt like good ideas which ran out of steam and were then discarded by the author.
Nevertheless, I loved the storytelling and Anam's usual easy style which weaves you into the lives of the characters so gracefully. So I carried on, setting aside my hopes for the book in the wake of her first two excellent novels.
If, in reading this book, you feel the same disappointments then I must say: Keep going!
As the book neared the end, the threads pulled together and, instead of separate pictures roughly sown together as I expected, it turned out that everything made one larger picture - and that picture was beautiful.
For me, the test of a good novel is this: Do I care what happens to the characters in the future? Do I feel I don't want the story to end? Anam's book passes this test with flying colours. I was heartbroken when the story had to end and I have found it hard to extract myself from the lives of the players within ever since.
If truth be told, I would probably rate this 4.5 rather than a full 5/5 as it is not absolutely perfect. There are one or two messy bits, one or two parts which I didn't feel tied up completely or added to the novel. But then, in one sense, that's just what Anam is writing about here. An imperfect world, with imperfect people and imperfect love. Nothing has to add up completely to make a perfect sum.
Indeed, a refreshing change is the complete absence of genuine 'bad guys' in this story. There are less flawed characters and more flawed characters - each with their own good and bad points. This was especially true of the narrator herself who readily admits to being a coward and breaking the heart of Elijah, who deserved so much better (although he himself is flawed, revealing a selfish youth just a little at one point). While many novels today are taking the 'flawed hero' line, Anam's book succeeds with me because usually I find myself unsympathetic to such characters, but not here. Zubaida's plight and her thoughts and reactions I could understand and appreciate. She is not entirely unlike me, I thought throughout the story. Perhaps that is why I loved her so much.
In short, this is a beautiful book full of Bangladeshi life, full of the reality of what that means yet also so full of hope, peace and love. The enigma of Bangladesh is that it is both a beautiful place and a terrible one; born of a history which is both tragic and inspiring. Anam manages to capture this dual, split-personality of the country and people absolutely perfectly. For that, she demands my highest praise and my deepest thanks.
July 18, 2016
I very nearly abandoned this book, more than once. Only the fact that I had been so impressed by its predecessor The Good Muslim stayed my hand. And now that I’m finished it, all 407 pages of it, I remain unconvinced that reading it was a good investment of my time.
The Bones of Grace is third in a trilogy, but in shifting the focus away from the post-war impact of the 1971 war of independence in Bangladesh, author Tahmina Anam seems to have lost her way and succumbed to writing an overwrought romance. The book begins with a tedious rehash of a Boston love affair between a half-hearted palaeontologist called Zubaida Haque (who is adopted) and an American called Elijah Strong. The narration is made even more irritating by the form chosen: almost all of this novel is Zubaida’s ‘older-and-wiser’ letter to this Elijah and she keeps addressing him by name.
Anyway, Zubaida goes off to a dig to find the fossils of a prehistoric whale (which she refers to incongruously as Diana). This whale, the Latin name of which now escapes me, is supposed to prove a back-to-front evolution, i.e. that there were creatures in the fossil record that were land animals which then adapted to the sea. This quest is, – yes, you guessed it – symbolic of Zubaida’s fossicking around on a quest to find herself, with the post-war identity of Bangladesh thrown in for good measure.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/07/19/t...
The Bones of Grace is third in a trilogy, but in shifting the focus away from the post-war impact of the 1971 war of independence in Bangladesh, author Tahmina Anam seems to have lost her way and succumbed to writing an overwrought romance. The book begins with a tedious rehash of a Boston love affair between a half-hearted palaeontologist called Zubaida Haque (who is adopted) and an American called Elijah Strong. The narration is made even more irritating by the form chosen: almost all of this novel is Zubaida’s ‘older-and-wiser’ letter to this Elijah and she keeps addressing him by name.
Anyway, Zubaida goes off to a dig to find the fossils of a prehistoric whale (which she refers to incongruously as Diana). This whale, the Latin name of which now escapes me, is supposed to prove a back-to-front evolution, i.e. that there were creatures in the fossil record that were land animals which then adapted to the sea. This quest is, – yes, you guessed it – symbolic of Zubaida’s fossicking around on a quest to find herself, with the post-war identity of Bangladesh thrown in for good measure.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/07/19/t...
July 27, 2020
The Bones of Grace took me on an amazing journey starting in Boston and going to a paleontological dig in the desert. It's both a complicated love story and a glimpse into other worlds - from wealthy Bangladeshis to the men working like slaves to build highrises in Dubai and the dangerous poorly paid work involved in dismantling a cruise ship, bit by bit. The images in the book, some beautiful, some disturbing, will remain with me.
I feel I have learned so much while, on the one hand, just enjoying a great read. Tahmima Anam left me also with a feeling of gratitude for all I have and an even greater sense of responsibility.
Note, I just realized that this is the third in a trilogy but you don't need to read the others to appreciate it.
I feel I have learned so much while, on the one hand, just enjoying a great read. Tahmima Anam left me also with a feeling of gratitude for all I have and an even greater sense of responsibility.
Note, I just realized that this is the third in a trilogy but you don't need to read the others to appreciate it.
June 15, 2017
I won this through the publisher's Facebook page in exchange for an honest review. The novel follows a young woman from Bangladesh as she falls in love, fights against tradition and searches for the bones of a whale dinosaur. I wanted to love this because the writing was so beautiful but I found it a chore to read. It was lovely but I just couldn't engage with it.
June 29, 2016
A wonderful love story about cultural clashes, family responsibilities and duty, and a woman finding her own way. I gave this five stars!
June 21, 2021
This story is set in Bangladesh and gives a picture of the large socioeconomic and cultural gap in that society. Zubaidah is from a liberal family and highly educated overseas. Her childhood friend is from an affluent business family. Their close friendship blossoms into a romance, and Zubaidah returns to the comforts of her middle class home an a lavish wedding. However she remains unsettled within herself due to her early childhood and her fleeting romance with an American man.
I like the setting and the investigations of ship breaking, which is a controversial industry in Bangladesh. However I felt there was much deviation into the romance which distracted from the main plot. Zubaidah came across as soft hearted and needy, despite being highly educated and living independently in US.
Overall the message was one of identity of the self and self fulfillment.
I like the setting and the investigations of ship breaking, which is a controversial industry in Bangladesh. However I felt there was much deviation into the romance which distracted from the main plot. Zubaidah came across as soft hearted and needy, despite being highly educated and living independently in US.
Overall the message was one of identity of the self and self fulfillment.
September 14, 2020
My friend Janet liked this, and based on that, I picked it up. I’m glad I did.
A reviewer/poster on Goodreads started her review like this: "Written in luminous prose and suffused with an air of yearning and melancholy” - such a fitting description.
Anam writes this in an interesting way. The book is actually a long story/letter that the main character, Zubaida, is writing to her US lover, Elijah. Zubaida is Bangladeshi, meets and falls in love with Elijah while she is studying at Cambridge, returns to Bangladesh and marries her childhood sweetheart because it is expected of her. She is therefore caught between two worlds and explores the challenges of trying to be her own person, although she doesn’t know what that is, having a career, and being dutiful to her cultural expectations.
The plot of course is far more complicated than this - not nearly as simplistic as it sounds here. She weaves a compelling story of love, loss, conflicting emotions and culture and regret.
Anam writes beautifully, she is positively lyrical in her writing.
It was a terrific read.
A reviewer/poster on Goodreads started her review like this: "Written in luminous prose and suffused with an air of yearning and melancholy” - such a fitting description.
Anam writes this in an interesting way. The book is actually a long story/letter that the main character, Zubaida, is writing to her US lover, Elijah. Zubaida is Bangladeshi, meets and falls in love with Elijah while she is studying at Cambridge, returns to Bangladesh and marries her childhood sweetheart because it is expected of her. She is therefore caught between two worlds and explores the challenges of trying to be her own person, although she doesn’t know what that is, having a career, and being dutiful to her cultural expectations.
The plot of course is far more complicated than this - not nearly as simplistic as it sounds here. She weaves a compelling story of love, loss, conflicting emotions and culture and regret.
Anam writes beautifully, she is positively lyrical in her writing.
It was a terrific read.
July 8, 2018
What do a couple of war heroes do to seek solace in the slow crumbling of their dreams? They built something new, a child. Shape her with their values and politics. What happens when their perfectly thought out plans do not mean anything. What if she falls for a American and out of love of her school sweetheart. And what when she finds out that basis of their relationship is false? Aman in her third novel, slowly spins the horrors of her countries in the story of the family. Its beautiful and inticrate and will make you tear up in the end.
January 29, 2024
No one does longing and loss and grief and regret like Tahmima Anam. But minus one star for not being as good as the first two books and the white man hyper-fixation
May 29, 2024
entered a two month long reading slump cause of this book and glad it's finally over 🥳 minus one star cause of elijah - the whole book being addressed to him made it my least favorite of the trilogy
July 4, 2016
The third book of the Bangladesh series, The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam stands out as a roller coaster ride of emotions, spread over the background of the new Bangladesh and a small shipping yard in Chittagong. And in between this beautiful mess, Anam’s protagonist, Zubaida narrates how her life completely changed when she fell in love with Elijah Strong.
Most of the June I was busy with Tahmima Anam’s Bangladesh series, and the books have totally swept me off my feet. They have kept me engaged and longing for more knowledge about the country and its people which is across the border. While the first two books focus on the Bangladesh Liberation war and footsteps of Islamism in the newly liberated country, The Bones of Grace follows the life of Zubaida Haque aka Zee, who is Maya’s adopted daughter. Both Maya and her husband inform Zubaida on her 9th birthday that she is adopted, but they never knew that this knowledge would be embedded so deep into Zubaida’s heart that she will start spinning her life around it.
In The Bones of Grace, Zubaida is writing a letter to Elijah Strong, the blue-eyed boy whom she met in a darkened concert hall in Boston, day before she was planning to go on a digging expedition to Tethys Sea in Pakistan to find the bones of a walking whale, which she had given the name of “Diana”. Elijah and Zubaida form an instant connection, something that Zubaida has never felt with anyone else. She sets on solving this evolutionary puzzle to settle her mind that is churning a thousand questions about her future after the dig in Dhaka. The dig also gives her solace from the fact she will give back something to the society, just like her parents have been doing, replenishing society after the Bangladesh War.
The dig doesn’t go as planned as a local team member falls into the grip of Balochistan Insurgency. And at the end of the day, they had to leave “Diana” half uncovered and half buried in the sand and go back to their home. As soon as she returns, life takes a full swing. She is married off to Rashid, her long time family friend and boyfriend, settles down eventually only to realize the pain of loss yet again when she suffers a miscarriage.
To find the true self and remove the scars of life, she leaves for Chittagong, the family resort, and from there to a shipping yard, where world’s many ships are taken down piece by piece, to be sold off. In Chittagong, Zubaida comes across Grace, recently arrived to be sold, and she has to cover the life of workers of the ship who will take her down. She also meets Anwar, a shipbreaker whose story holds a key that unlocks the past of Zubaida’s life, and a chance for a new life as well. In the shadow of the ship being torn down to its bones, Zubaida will make some decisions from which she can never turn back.
When I started reading The Bones of Grace, I didn’t know that I have to be very patient with the story. But then after a few pages, I came across this line “Don’t blame me for parsing out the story slowly, Elijah. These things take time.”
And that is when I understood that the story is much bigger than I am thinking. And my, it truly is. When you read The Bones of Grace, you will relate to the confusion and feelings of Zubaida Haque. You will come across a new little world of Chittagong, where ships are stripped down to be sold off. And the feeling by which Chittagong is described, you won’t be able to keep the book down. From Diana to those of ships that land up to be pulled apart in this highly exploitative ecosystem, an amazing relationship of evolution has been shown between a living and a non-living. Though I would have really liked if the story could have been a little fast paced and not so extra descriptive, The Bones of Grace will definitely take a place in your heart. And do not rush with the story, let it work it’s magic on you. Some of you might feel like giving up on The Bones of Grace, but then you will loose out on a story which is magnificent.
Zubaida’s character is someone who has been marred young by the fact of her adoption. Since then, she always looks around for a purpose, or for someone whom she could relate to. She finds her purpose first in the dig of Diana, but then that is taken away from her. She relates herself to Elijah when she comes to back to Dhaka, texting their feelings using song titles. Zubaida may appear confused and disoriented to many readers, but if you carefully decipher her feelings, she is one of those many people trying to find their roots. She is strong, yet she is vulnerable at the core. And she is something that will always be etched in your memory.
I have spent my half June with Tahmima Anam, and I simply love her stories. Make sure to pick up your copies and devour into the roller coaster ride of love, lost and found. Now I am off to sipping my tea, patiently waiting for her next book.
Most of the June I was busy with Tahmima Anam’s Bangladesh series, and the books have totally swept me off my feet. They have kept me engaged and longing for more knowledge about the country and its people which is across the border. While the first two books focus on the Bangladesh Liberation war and footsteps of Islamism in the newly liberated country, The Bones of Grace follows the life of Zubaida Haque aka Zee, who is Maya’s adopted daughter. Both Maya and her husband inform Zubaida on her 9th birthday that she is adopted, but they never knew that this knowledge would be embedded so deep into Zubaida’s heart that she will start spinning her life around it.
In The Bones of Grace, Zubaida is writing a letter to Elijah Strong, the blue-eyed boy whom she met in a darkened concert hall in Boston, day before she was planning to go on a digging expedition to Tethys Sea in Pakistan to find the bones of a walking whale, which she had given the name of “Diana”. Elijah and Zubaida form an instant connection, something that Zubaida has never felt with anyone else. She sets on solving this evolutionary puzzle to settle her mind that is churning a thousand questions about her future after the dig in Dhaka. The dig also gives her solace from the fact she will give back something to the society, just like her parents have been doing, replenishing society after the Bangladesh War.
The dig doesn’t go as planned as a local team member falls into the grip of Balochistan Insurgency. And at the end of the day, they had to leave “Diana” half uncovered and half buried in the sand and go back to their home. As soon as she returns, life takes a full swing. She is married off to Rashid, her long time family friend and boyfriend, settles down eventually only to realize the pain of loss yet again when she suffers a miscarriage.
To find the true self and remove the scars of life, she leaves for Chittagong, the family resort, and from there to a shipping yard, where world’s many ships are taken down piece by piece, to be sold off. In Chittagong, Zubaida comes across Grace, recently arrived to be sold, and she has to cover the life of workers of the ship who will take her down. She also meets Anwar, a shipbreaker whose story holds a key that unlocks the past of Zubaida’s life, and a chance for a new life as well. In the shadow of the ship being torn down to its bones, Zubaida will make some decisions from which she can never turn back.
When I started reading The Bones of Grace, I didn’t know that I have to be very patient with the story. But then after a few pages, I came across this line “Don’t blame me for parsing out the story slowly, Elijah. These things take time.”
And that is when I understood that the story is much bigger than I am thinking. And my, it truly is. When you read The Bones of Grace, you will relate to the confusion and feelings of Zubaida Haque. You will come across a new little world of Chittagong, where ships are stripped down to be sold off. And the feeling by which Chittagong is described, you won’t be able to keep the book down. From Diana to those of ships that land up to be pulled apart in this highly exploitative ecosystem, an amazing relationship of evolution has been shown between a living and a non-living. Though I would have really liked if the story could have been a little fast paced and not so extra descriptive, The Bones of Grace will definitely take a place in your heart. And do not rush with the story, let it work it’s magic on you. Some of you might feel like giving up on The Bones of Grace, but then you will loose out on a story which is magnificent.
Zubaida’s character is someone who has been marred young by the fact of her adoption. Since then, she always looks around for a purpose, or for someone whom she could relate to. She finds her purpose first in the dig of Diana, but then that is taken away from her. She relates herself to Elijah when she comes to back to Dhaka, texting their feelings using song titles. Zubaida may appear confused and disoriented to many readers, but if you carefully decipher her feelings, she is one of those many people trying to find their roots. She is strong, yet she is vulnerable at the core. And she is something that will always be etched in your memory.
I have spent my half June with Tahmima Anam, and I simply love her stories. Make sure to pick up your copies and devour into the roller coaster ride of love, lost and found. Now I am off to sipping my tea, patiently waiting for her next book.
June 28, 2016
Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam succeeds on the most objective level in that it made me want to read Anam’s other books, The Golden Age and The Good Muslim. It is a narrated by Zubaidah Haque, a Bangladeshi woman who grew up with relative privilege. She attended college in the US, studied paleontology and when the book opens, is about to leave for a dig in Baluchistan, Pakistan, to search for ambulocetus, the walking whale, a transitional creature of the land and sea. The symbolism is obvious, as she is a transitional woman, both Bangladeshi and Western. She is also torn between her passionate love for Elijah whom she met just as she was preparing to leave Harvard for the dig and her comfortable and expected love for Rashid, her childhood friend and sweetheart to whom she is engaged.
Although Zubaidah chooses duty and family, she also feels alienated and alone, obsessed with the knowledge that she was adopted. That she has no one of her own blood. She wants to find her mother, but no one will tell her anything. She is unhappy and takes a job translating and helping a documentarian who is doing a film about the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh. This got me looking into the National Geographic article that Gabriela, the documentarian read and was inspired by. This was fascinating and, of course, was a vehicle to advance the story, bringing together Zubaidah, Rashid, Elijah and the secrets of her past.
3paws
I liked Bones of Grace, but I did not love it. I thought her love for Elijah was sort of unreal. Sure, people do fall in love at first sight and it can be passionate and heartfelt, but the love story felt sort of false, a construct necessary to create a conflict. While I loved that they wrote each other texts in Nina Simone song titles, Elijah was too much of a counterpoint to Rashid, I think. Anam was much more believable writing about the marriage to Rashid and their relationship. I appreciated that she resisted the impulse to make him a bad husband.
The real villain, if there is one, is Zubaidah herself. She is type of character who drives me nuts, who decides by not deciding, who goes along to get along, and then wallows in misery. Of course, if she had been honest, true to herself, she would have acted differently and there would have been no story. That’s the problem for readers like me, the characters we like, the ones who talk to people and say what they think and speak up for themselves just don’t end up in these travails of being married to someone they like while pining for someone they love.
However, the story has many fascinating elements. For example, Zee’s parents were freedom fighters whose nostalgia for their glory days frustrates her a bit. It reminds me of people of my generation and how we get tired of hearing about people from the Sixties waxing nostalgic for their activism. That is so realistic and human, the faint envy of missing out on greatness, of the opportunity to be challenged to greatness.
I also appreciate that Bones of Grace presents a complex Bangladesh. Yes, there is extreme poverty. Yes, life is hard for the poor and even harder for poor women. But there is a middle class, an entrepreneurial class, women who are educated. They are not wearing burkas and they are working. Zee’s mother is working to prosecute war criminals. Her mother’s friend is working for labor rights for workers. Because Anam is Bangladeshi, she is capable of capturing the contradictions and complexity of her country. She loves Bangladesh and it, perhaps more than anything else, is the real rival for her love, not Rashid.
I received an advance copy for review from publishers via the GoodReads Giveaways program.
My review is here: https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
Although Zubaidah chooses duty and family, she also feels alienated and alone, obsessed with the knowledge that she was adopted. That she has no one of her own blood. She wants to find her mother, but no one will tell her anything. She is unhappy and takes a job translating and helping a documentarian who is doing a film about the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh. This got me looking into the National Geographic article that Gabriela, the documentarian read and was inspired by. This was fascinating and, of course, was a vehicle to advance the story, bringing together Zubaidah, Rashid, Elijah and the secrets of her past.
3paws
I liked Bones of Grace, but I did not love it. I thought her love for Elijah was sort of unreal. Sure, people do fall in love at first sight and it can be passionate and heartfelt, but the love story felt sort of false, a construct necessary to create a conflict. While I loved that they wrote each other texts in Nina Simone song titles, Elijah was too much of a counterpoint to Rashid, I think. Anam was much more believable writing about the marriage to Rashid and their relationship. I appreciated that she resisted the impulse to make him a bad husband.
The real villain, if there is one, is Zubaidah herself. She is type of character who drives me nuts, who decides by not deciding, who goes along to get along, and then wallows in misery. Of course, if she had been honest, true to herself, she would have acted differently and there would have been no story. That’s the problem for readers like me, the characters we like, the ones who talk to people and say what they think and speak up for themselves just don’t end up in these travails of being married to someone they like while pining for someone they love.
However, the story has many fascinating elements. For example, Zee’s parents were freedom fighters whose nostalgia for their glory days frustrates her a bit. It reminds me of people of my generation and how we get tired of hearing about people from the Sixties waxing nostalgic for their activism. That is so realistic and human, the faint envy of missing out on greatness, of the opportunity to be challenged to greatness.
I also appreciate that Bones of Grace presents a complex Bangladesh. Yes, there is extreme poverty. Yes, life is hard for the poor and even harder for poor women. But there is a middle class, an entrepreneurial class, women who are educated. They are not wearing burkas and they are working. Zee’s mother is working to prosecute war criminals. Her mother’s friend is working for labor rights for workers. Because Anam is Bangladeshi, she is capable of capturing the contradictions and complexity of her country. She loves Bangladesh and it, perhaps more than anything else, is the real rival for her love, not Rashid.
I received an advance copy for review from publishers via the GoodReads Giveaways program.
My review is here: https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
November 28, 2020
A well written book detailing the very different paths of twin girls. The story had romance, tragedy and an unusual backdrop of a ship breaking yard. The characters and situations they found themselves in were believable.
November 17, 2022
Beautiful and lyrical, Anam is an absolute treat for lovers of gorgeous writing. Also as someone growing up in the same Dhaka as the protagonist, I loved how accurately the author captures the city’s nuances. However, it sort of stopped there for me. The story itself was all over the place and I didn’t feel any conviction towards any of the characters. The weakest in the trilogy, it was a tedious read by the end of it.
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