Good People by Patmeena Sabit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The central figures in this novel are the Sharafs, an Afghan immigrant family. There is a death, but we don’t know at first who died or whether it was an accident or a murder. Although fiction, the author says it was inspired by a real case. The story is told in a piecemeal way modeled after a typical crime documentary where snippets of many interviews are interleaved to tell the story in chronological order, but from multiple different views and experiences. The Afghans surrounding the main characters look at all the facts from the standpoint of their traditional culture and the Islam religion, while neighbors, teachers, reporters, police, and other non-Afghans see things a different, traditional American way. Interestingly, the author does not tell what happened by any purported statement of the main characters, only surrounding characters, friends, witnesses, reporters, etc., except for an attorney representing the accused at the end. Thus there is a lot of rumor and speculation with people accusing and others defending. Some Afghans say the family was too American while others say the family hadn’t assimilated and were actually anti-American and too Afghan. It does a good job of portraying racism, culture clash, and generation clash.
Some people may be put off by the unusual format, with some “chapters” being only one sentence, and even the longer ones usually only three or four pages. It also suffers a little from hyperbole and repetition. The purported newspaper coverage is completely tabloidy, hearsay, and gossip, not credible reporting. We get four, five or more people making accusations or providing evidence or theories that suggest someone is guilty, followed by the same number of others explaining away that so-called evidence and coming to their defense. You only need one or two of each, not five. In short the book is somewhat overdone and overlong, but still a worthwhile read.