Girl from the Garden (Foroutan) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[Ultimately,] The Girl from the Garden is about how telling stories helps us to hold our past in our hands—and about how a flowering yard "teeming with life"’ in far-off Los Angeles can movingly become, for one wandering storyteller, a home.
Seattle Times


Foroutan’s characters grapple, often vainly, for control against larger forces—a God who doesn’t answer prayers, a state that doesn’t recognize their humanity, and people who cannot be made to bend to their needs, no matter how badly they love them.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch


Parnaz Foroutan’s scorching debut novel, The Girl From the Garden, takes us to Iran, where a couple’s inability to conceive pits a young wife against her tyrannical husband, who will stop at nothing to secure an heir.
W Magazine (online)


A riveting portrait of family strife in a troubled land—and the fallout when a woman’s fertility determines her worth.
People


A lush debut.... Foroutan is a modern-day Scheherazade, weaving her tale through the entire 20th century, from an aging woman in her L.A. garden to the brothers whose determination to spawn heirs tortured the harem she was raised in.
Willamette Week


(Starred review.) Foroutan's richly layered debut explores...a single household in a Jewish enclave in Iran.... The framework of flashbacks within flashbacks...exhilaratingly propels the plot, and Foroutan's sumptuous prose paints a vivid portrait of a rarely explored...setting.
Publishers Weekly


In this debut novel, Mahboubeh Malacouti, an elderly woman living in Los Angeles, recalls the stories surrounding her family in early 1900s Iran.... Though Foroutan is better at writing about the past than the present,...she clearly has a gift for storytelling. —Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal


(Starred review.) In this stunning first novel, Foroutan draws on her own family history to integrate the lore and traditions of old Iran. Suspenseful and haunting, this riveting story of jealousy, sacrifice, and betrayal and the intimately drawn characters within will not be easily forgotten (One of Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels of 2015).
Booklist


(Starred review.) [A]n elderly woman pieces together the tragedy of her ancestors' Iranian Jewish household, in which the actions of two brothers "who would sacrifice anything for one another" result in sorrow for three wives.... Deftly structured, this novel traces those complications to their core...while lending grace through the delicacy of its observation.... [The] poetic narration overlays the suffering with surprising beauty.
Kirkus Reviews