We’re about halfway through the month, so I reckon it’s time to give my review of Good Intentions by Kasim Ali for our discussion on December 14th. For December, we picked Good Intentions, an adult novel that takes a hard and unflinching look at the intersection of religion, ethnicity, race and relationships. A lot of stuff intersects at this point and Ali doesn’t shy away from any of it.
General Thoughts:
This story isn’t tidy. This story is unflinchingly real. All the messy emotions of first true loves, first true relationships are on full display here. The story follows Nur, a restless, curious and confused British Pakistani man and his eventual relationship with Yasmina, focused, driven, and clear-eyed, who is Nur’s opposite in most ways. They share their faith, they share a love of the written word and they share a love of modernism and on these things they eventual build a relationship.
Nur, however, feels a continuous pressure to live up to both his own desires for a life free of the constraints of his parents cultural expectations while at the same doing everything he can to avoid disappointing them. Can Nur balance these counterpoints and maintain a loving, honest relationship with Yasmina? #RAFO
A friend of mine visited this past weekend and he came by the shop. We got to talking about books, of course, and it turns out that he thinks I’m a bit too free with my four and five star reviews. LOL. I conceded that he may be right. Over the past few days, I’ve sought to be more discerning about how I rate books. Comparatively, I should probably revise my star rating for our last book club selection down to a 2.5.
For scale, I enjoyed Good Intentions as much as Caul Baby. One of the things that I’ve bemoaned over the past few weeks is that authors can showcase a stellar talent at building characters and telling a story but can fail miserably at resolving the plot. I think this book absolutely nails the landing. I don’t think that there was any other way for this book to end.
Good Intentions by Kasim Ali are going fast! Grab yours here. Please join us for our next book club discussion.
The deets:
707 South 16th Street
Wilmington NC 28401
December 14th, 5:30 to 6:45 or so.
My rating:
4.25/5 stars.