Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Gardens of Consolation by Adriana Hunter

2017; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 91; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2017.0212

1945-8134

Raha Namy,

Global Socioeconomic and Political Dynamics

in Canada during the 1990s. An older girl from China, Ai-ming, comes to stay with Marie and her mother. When Ai-ming tells Marie about her family, the story begins to unfold. The mysterious Book of Records supplements the tale. The Book of Records is a multichaptered and unfinished work of literature that serves as a family heirloom and a tool of communication. The family must be careful with the Book of Records, as it would surely be destroyed if found. They must also safeguard their Western record collection and musical instruments. Despite crushing censorship, Thien’s characters are comforted and sustained by literature and music. Each character’s story is a testament to the power of art. A young man in the family called Sparrow grows up to be a talented musical composer with a bright future. After the school he teaches at is closed down, he is assigned to a factory and does not compose music for over twenty years. His cousin, Zhuli, was only six when her parents were branded as counterrevolutionaries and she was separated from them. Now, at the age of fourteen, she is a talented violinist with dreams of performing abroad, but the government will not grant her a visa due to her family background. Even her uncle, a decorated hero of the Chinese Civil War, is eventually targeted. Written as beautifully as the poetry that it cites, this book is a powerful story of creativity and perseverance. It expresses the human need for artistic expression and connection and the need to remember. The Book of Records fulfills all these needs for the family, and Do Not Say We Have Nothing can fulfill these needs for the reader. Amy Lantrip University of Colorado, Boulder Parisa Reza. The Gardens of Consolation. Trans. Adriana Hunter. New York. Europa Editions. 2016. 259 pages. Parisa Reza’s novel The Gardens of Consolation takes us into the lives of an Iranian couple, Sardar and Talla, from their youth to their middle ages, later shifting its focus to their only son, Bahram. The story travels from rural Iran to its capital on a tapestry that stretches from 1910 to 1953, the year the US and UK-backed coup d’état toppled Prime Minister Mosaddegh from power, hindering the democratic movements of Iranian society. The book opens with the twelve-yearold Talla and the twenty-year-old Sardar, married three years prior, leaving the village where “at the gates of hell and the source of Paradise, blooms Mohamed’s flower,” where the best rosewater in the country is produced. They travel through the desert all the way to Varamin, south of Tehran, where Sardar has already bought some livestock to make his living. The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter focuses more on Talla’s life in the village while she waits for Sardar to come back from Tehran and fetch her. The second is the story of the couple as they build their lives in Varamin and later in Shemiran and try to have a child. The remainder are focused more on Bahram’s life story; from a son of “peasants” to a young man accepted to university, trying “to distance himself from his background,” getting involved with political parties, and trying to figure out his relationships with women. To tell the story of the Amir family, Reza chooses a style and tone that reminds one of a fairy tale. Reading The Gardens of Consolation feels like being on a flying carpet with your grandmother and listening to her telling you, in a nonchalant dreamy tone, a bedtime story about once upon a time in a fantasy world. It is magical, sometimes shocking and sometimes familiar. It dramatizes some details and disregards others, lingers on little moments and skips large spans of time, letting this family of three take you into the historical trajectory of a society undergoing rapid, vast changes—economically , politically, socially, and personally; domestically and internationally. Throughout the narrative, Reza explains many of the historical events and aspects of this society—for example, its rituals and traditions, limitations, hopes, etc.—that are unknown to a reader who may be foreign to this world...