A Good Country (2017) by Laleh Khadivi: a Tiny Book Review

I am slowly catching up on writing quick reviews of some of the good books I've read in the past few weeks.

Khadivi is a writing MFA writing professor and also, my boss. Although she never mentions any of her books in our 1:1s, I feel almost obligatory to read them.

The book's first half is on the slower side and requires some patience and quiet reading to get into it. I read the first half, stopped to read other books (I do this a lot..), then went back to finish the book. Some books I never finish reading for unexplainable reasons, but oh boy, how grateful I am to myself for picking it up again.

Reza, or Rez, the son of wealthy middle-class Iranian immigrants, wants to be just like any other teenage boy: riding the SoCal swells, smoking pot, going to parties, and always looking for the next after-school hook-up. A surfing trip that goes wrong leads to his eventual distance from his (mostly white) usual gang. He gets lost, meets friends that are more like him, and starts to question where he belongs. His desperate search for belonging eventually takes him to Syria to join an ideal that promises a life free of Muslim suffering and where he can finally "be home".

Reza's subtle and gradual psychological transformation suggests a more emotionally nuanced rather than politically motivated youth radicalization. Khadivi's language takes you inside Reza's heart and mind where, as The New York Times Review puts it, "... all those small nothings that, over three formative years, add up to everything for Reza Courdee".

It's a beautiful book that I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in psychological storytelling, adulthood, and belongings.

After all, we all want to belong and we’re all desperately searching for it.