Oct 18

Oct 18 Home Fire

Author: Kamila Shamsie
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

The suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences

Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother's death, she's accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma's worst fears are confirmed.

Then Eamonn enters the sisters' lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to — or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz's salvation? Suddenly, two families' fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined, in this searing novel that asks: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

TL;DR Review

Home Fire is a quick but hard-hitting read about xenophobia. It’s a raw, emotional, expertly crafted novel that asks readers to examine their own morality.

For you if: You’re looking for a faster-paced work of literary fiction.

Full Review

“Grief was the deal God struck with the angel of death, who wanted an unpassable river to separate the living from the dead; grief the bridge that would allow the dead to flit among the living, their footsteps overheard, their laughter around the corner, their posture recognizable in the bodies of strangers you would follow down the street, willing them to never turn around.”

I read Home Fire as part of the #ReadingWomen challenge, because it won the women’s Prize in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize. So I knew it was going to be great when I started it, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The book’s split into five sections, each in a different character’s point of view. The first is Isma, eldest sister and family caretaker. The second is Eamonn, son of the xenophobic Minister of Defense for the UK, who formed a friendship with Isma but then collides with her sister, Aneeka. The third is Isma and Aneeka’s brother, Parvaiz, who was manipulated into the Jihadi army. The fourth is Aneeka, and the fifth is Eamonn’s father. The story these POVs weave is one of family, siblinghood, romance, loyalty, grief, acceptance, the choice between what’s right and what’s easy, and consequences of all of it.

This book surprised me in that it went a very different way from what I expected to happen, based on the beginning. It moves fast, barreling toward the explosive ending — that very last page, oof. It was powerful not just for its shock value, but for the way it changed the feeling of the whole book. Rather than making a statement, she raised more questions — not plot questions, but moral questions.

And needless to say, the writing here is stunning. There were pages and pages of a gorgeous passage describing grief, metaphor after metaphor, that took my breath away.