Review: 'The Other Americans'

The Other Americans
By Laila Lamani
Literary fiction
March 2019
Pantheon
ISBN: 978-1524747145

A daughter seeking to live her own life on her own terms, a dutiful daughter her mother compares her to, a beloved father who is killed in a hit-and-run accident one night, a man who may or may have not seen that hit-and-run but who is afraid of the police, a deputy who remembers that first daughter as his beautiful and kind high school classmate, and his war buddy who is struggling with his return to civilian life -- all of these characters are Americans, those who are us and not us, brought to vivid life in Laila Lamani's latest novel, The Other Americans.

Lamani, a Pulitzer Prize finalist with her prior novel, The Moor's Account, slowly introduces each character in short chapters that are told from their points of view. Regardless of background or any other identifier, each character is fully realized and speaks for himself or herself. Their voices are grounded in how they see themselves and how the world sees them.

Nora is the daughter seeking to live her own life. She is a musician, a composer studying at university with a life not connected to that of her family. Her parents and older sister fled Morocco before she was born in America. Her father, Driss, has owned and run a diner in their small California town for years. One night, he is hit while riding a bicycle, coming home. The vehicle never stopped. Nora feels a great deal of guilt for not being there, and hurries back.

As the family's story, and the stories of each member, unfolds, others connected to the family, the diner and the accident also are revealed. Efrain isn't sure how much of the accident he saw and doesn't want to talk to the police. He is undocumented and has a family. His wife believes it is his duty to report what he knows, because it is the right thing to do.

The cranky bowling alley owner, Anderson Baker, whose business is next to the diner, didn't see anything. The long years he has put in at his alley are showing. Newly arrived Detective Erica Coleman is frustrated by the lack of information as much as she is by the barriers she sees to her son making friends and fitting in. Jeremy, the deputy, remembers Nora's kindnesses to him when they were classmates and stops by the family home to offer his condolences.

The structure has a Rashomon feel. As the various portions of each character's stories show events in different lights, revealing a greater understanding of them and of what happened the night Driss died and what led to that point. Not everything that happens to these characters is by chance, but everything that follows is determined by how they feel.

It is in the nuances of these feelings and reactions that the beauty of the novel lives. When Nora learns of her father's death, she thinks:

I could have talked to him one more time, heard the care in his voice, and yet I had squandered the chance. And all for some bitter coffee in a paper cup, hastily consumed before confronting a class of bored prep-school kids making their way through The Odyssey.

Or Efrain, as he tries to remember exactly what he heard and saw on the night of the hit-and-run:

Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember.

Or Nora's mother, Maryam, the woman who relies on her faith in matters great and small, praying for her daughter:

... I murmured a prayer for her, as I had so many times in the past, only this time I prayed for more than her health, more than her safety, more than her happiness. I prayed for her greedily, for the thing I had given up years ago and never found again. Home.

And, Nora again, on this novel's foundation, love, especially within a family:

Only now, after my father's death, did I come to understand that love was not a tame or passive creature, but a rebellious beast, messy and unpredictable, capacious and forgiving ...

Just as in Lamani's earlier works, the personal becomes the universal. We are the the others to those who are the others to us. When looking at other Americans, what is being reflected back matters as much as the original. Everyone is part of a family, and these ties that bind can be restricting, empowering and supportive, or some of each.

©2019 All Rights Reserved TheLitForum.com Reviews and reprinted by permission

Review: 'The Moor's Account'

The Moor's Account
By Laila Lalami
Literary historical fiction
September 2014
Pantheon
ISBN: 978-0307911667

Winners may control the narrative, but in Laila Lalami's latest novel, who wins and who gets to tell the true story depends on how one views it.

The Moor's Account is based on one line in a report of a Spanish expedition to the New World in the 16th century. Nothing is known about the black slave who survived, but that one line was enough for Moroccan-born Lalami to weave a tale of many stories in a densely packed novel.

Mustafa is the hard-working and greedy son of a trader who takes his life and freedom for granted. When his Moroccan city is captured by the Portuguese, times get hard and his family struggles for the basics. He decides the way to save the others is to sell himself into slavery. His years working for a Spanish merchant offer few moments of happiness, and his loyalty and ability to help his master make a fortune are not appreciated. He ends up the slave of a soldier traveling to the New World to seek gold and lands for the king of Spain in New Florida.

Just as hubris helped lead to his downfall in his native city, ignorant pride leads to disaster for the Spaniards. Their journey through the wilderness does not lead to the gold they thought would be found easily. As their number dwindle and they are reduced to the most base forms of trying to survive, Mustafa, who was renamed Esteban, then Estebanico, finds ways to survive and thrive.

Mustafa's inherent dignity and willingness to meet the circumstances of each day as they find him, or his resilience, are shown more than told about in the novel. Indeed, every aspect of the novel is subtle, whether it's how Mustafa and the Indians are regarded by the Spaniards, or the small differences in how individuals view the world and their changing circumstances.

Written in a highly formalized fashion, The Moor's Account is more like a series of fables than a fast-paced novel. There are adventures aplenty, but the action is not the point It is the appreciation for the sun, the rain, food and good company you can count on that matters. It is the opportunity to tell one's story so that one is not forgotten.

©2015 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Sunday Sentence: The Moor's Account

As inspired by Fobbit author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, the best sentence(s) I read this week, presented without further commentary or context:

Maybe there is no true story, only imagined stories, vague collections of what we saw and what we heard, what we felt and what we thought.

-- Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account