Caspian Rain
Issue #33
By Gina B. Nahai (MacAdam/Cage, 250 pages, $25)
By Jen Girdish
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
It can be tricky to write about hope. The writer runs the risk of being too earnest and maudlin — sending the reader into glucose shock — or in the opposite direction, the writer can be too tragic and cynical. This is something Gina B. Nahai understands in her third novel, Caspian Rain
Caspian Rain is set during the 1970s in Iran, a country teetering on Islamic revolution. It’s in this environment that Yaas is born and raised in a family defined by class conflict. Her father is from a wealthy Iranian Jewish family, and her mother grew up a street away from the old Jewish ghetto in South Tehran. Despite not quite belonging in either of her parents’ worlds, Yaas refuses to give up the hope of keeping her family together.
There’s a lot at stake. Her father has fallen in love with another woman, and Yaas herself is stricken with a mysterious disease. Nahai’s stories, as always, smack of magical realism (she is often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez): a ghost brother who returns to haunt his family, a man who steals hair from the dead, and a tango dancer who may or may not be Argentinean. Against this is the simplicity of a young girl who just wants to be accepted.
Occasionally the pace is too languid, and at times the tone wobbles toward heavy-handedness — Nahai seems a little worried that her message will be lost in the writing — but Caspian Rain gracefully depicts the dynamics of a divided family by taking us through the diverse spheres and structures of Iranian society not often glimpsed in English literature.
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