Behind You Is the Sea, Susan Muaddi Darraj’s debut novel, brings readers into the lives of three Palestinian households in and round Baltimore: the Salamehs, the Baladis and the Ammars. Generational disputes kind the core of the novel’s motion, which unfolds via weddings, graduations, unplanned pregnancies and funerals. Women’s points are additionally at the fore, as every of the novel’s chapters, which perform as linked tales, reveal households each divided and united by class, gender and conventional values.
In the opening chapter, “A Child of Air,” teenage Reema Baladi resolves to maintain her child, whereas refusing to marry her Puerto Rican boyfriend. In “Mr. Ammar Gets Drunk at the Wedding,” Walid, patriarch of the rich Ammar household, despairs at the lack of Arab traditions at his oldest son’s wedding ceremony to an American. “Ride Along” focuses on a police officer, Marcus Salameh, and the rift between his father and his sister, Amal, over Amal’s perceived dishonor, a rupture which grows deeper after the dying of their mom.
Darraj deftly explores class tensions in the titular chapter: When the Ammars make use of younger Maysoon Baladi as a housekeeper, she is shocked by the couple’s indolence and their spoiled teenage children, however flirts brazenly with father and husband, Demetri. In a later chapter, Demetri’s daughter Hiba strikes in together with her grandparents after an embarrassing incident in school and an unstated however deeply felt lack of help from her dad and mom. The remaining chapter “Escorting the Body,” the solely chapter not set in the United States, sees Marcus fulfilling his father’s want to be buried in his Palestinian village, a go to which reveals dramatic secrets and techniques about the life he left behind.
Behind You Is the Sea attracts a composite portrait of Palestinian American households with sensitivity and humor, its linked tales breaking down stereotypes and embracing complexity.
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