Sonora

January 16, 2017
Ahlam, the narrator of this wise and poetic debut novel, grows up in the desert suburbs of Phoenix with a Palestinian father and an Israeli mother. The conflict raging overseas between Palestine and Israel provide the tense backdrop to her family life, even as she lives mostly in her imagination, the victim of startlingly vivid fever dreams that might also be premonitions. Then, in her freshman year of high school she meets Laura, a girl who was struck by lightning as a child, and the two form an intense bond that carries them through early experiments with drugs, alcohol, and sex, their friendship secured by a series of shared experiences that ultimately lead them to a mysterious man’s loft in Brooklyn, where much of their tempestuous shared adulthood will play out. Both vaguely pursue careers in the arts while also succumbing to a dangerously party-fueled lifestyle that threatens to break apart the fragile lives they have built together. Glimpses of the otherworldly abound, alongside an abiding interest in the cosmos, and Assadi’s lyrical prose nicely complements these preoccupations with the unreal or the ungraspable. The structure, moving back and forth in time and space, adds a sense of the magical to a sometimes tragic but always beautiful coming-of-age story.

January 15, 2017
A coming-of-age story set largely in the surreal desert-world of Phoenix.In this atmospheric debut, protagonist Ahlam's identity crisis is clear from the start--she's the daughter of an Israeli woman and a Palestinian refugee; a high school misfit; a dreamer of strangely prophetic fever dreams. So when she meets Laura, a musician and rebel who seems to exist outside their school's social structure, it isn't surprising that the two find solace in each other. Ahlam and Laura fall into a close friendship, confiding in one another about their broken home lives; discovering drugs and sex; and meeting the enigmatic Dylan, an older artist from New York City. Meanwhile, strange things are happening in the desert: mysterious blue lights occasionally appear across the nighttime sky, spotted by some, including Ahlam's father, and an unexplained series of deaths and suicides spreads through the high school. Fearing they might be next and haunted by the desert's (and their own) secrets, Ahlam and Laura follow Dylan to New York to pursue their dreams--Ahlam to become a dancer, Laura to make music--but, drunk on the city's intensity and Dylan's drug-fueled lifestyle, their lives quickly begin to spin out of control. Though its New York portions can sometimes seem unfocused, the novel provides a lyrical meditation on the confusion and awe of growing up that is made beautifully strange by the desert's haunting presence. Ahlam's feelings of isolation and inability to fit in--particularly when she's with the magnetic, confident, but flawed Laura--are also rendered in a way that's both typical and painfully, relatably fresh. But Assadi shines most in developing the intense, almost destructive bond between the two girls that forms the emotional nucleus of the book. Muses Ahlam, "I...felt her in the way that I moved, how over the years I came to light my cigarettes just like her, between ring and middle fingers, how I laughed or how my cash was always stuffed and disorganized in my wallet, just like hers...I had brought her into my skin. I dreamed sometimes that in the mirror was her face reflected back at me. Still, I don't know where she ended and I began." Lyrical, raw, and moving.

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Starred review from April 15, 2017

This debut novel by Assadi, a recent MFA grad, is a hypnotic coming-of-age story set in the Southwestern Sonoran Desert and New York City. Like Assadi herself, Ahlam is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee father and an Israeli mother, and her intimate narration carries the reader effortlessly between the past and the present, through a kaleidoscope of memories, as she sits at her father's side in the hospital. The myths he taught her merge with those from many other cultures throughout the novel. In high school, Ahlam felt like an outcast and "other" until she met Laura, another misfit whose heritage is Native American and Mexican. Laura and Ahlam become almost one person, navigating their first experiences with sex and drugs together. They meet the artistic young Dylan in their high school library and follow him to New York, where their bacchanalian lifestyle recalls an older, messier city where it was possible to live on next to nothing and party all night. VERDICT This poetic, multicultural novel will enchant younger adults or anyone who has ever felt out of place in the world.--Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2017
The daughter of a Palestinian-refugee father and an Israeli mother, Ahlam grows up in the desert near Phoenix, her childhood consumed by her desire to meet the enticing Laura and by the fever dreams that consume her sleep. Ahlam finally meets the fascinating, dangerous Laura as a freshman in high school, and the two bond, being called, variously, goths, gross lesbians, witches, or ugly freaks. Their lives seem to be cursed, pervaded by death until, at 18, they move to New York, where Ahlam hopes to become a dancer, and Laura, a singer. But dreams are fleeting things, and hope is soon replaced by a haze of drugs and alcohol as their lives spiral out of control. Assadi's first novel islike Ahlam's dreamsfevered, fragmented, and impressionistic. Its language is lushly poeticleaves make a shivery melody but occasionally strained: a man's presence is gorgeous as if being crushed in lush velvet while cascading off the edge of a cliff. Though the novel takes itself very seriously, it will interest those looking for a stylish read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)