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Far Cry From The
Turquoise Room
Told from both
daughter and father's perspectives, Far Cry From The Turquoise Room is a
coming-of-age, riches-to-rags tale of loss, resilience, and self-discovery, set
just before the millennium. It is also about the passage of childhood into
puberty.
Leila is the eight-year-old daughter of Hassan Nassiri, a wealthy Iranian
property owner, and younger sister to the adored Fayruz, her father's favourite
daughter.
But a holiday narrowboat tragedy has far-reaching consequences for the
surviving family. Hassan withdraws into reclusive grief, when he’s not escaping
into work, or high jinks with his men friends at his second home in Hampstead,
leaving Leila to fend for herself in a lonely world of nannies, chess and
star-gazing.
Leila eventually runs away from home and joins a family of travellers in
Sussex, and so follows a tale of adventure, danger and romance – and further
anguish for her surviving family. But how will she fare at such a young age and
will her family ever find her?
My Thoughts:
Far From The Turquoise Room is a beautiful book that transfixed me with its wonderful characterisations that pulled me in from the outset and enticed me to pull up a chair and join them on their journeys. This really is contemporary literature at its best and I can recommend it to all.
A family tragedy drives the plot here, as the story unfolds from the perspectives of both Hassan and his daughter Leila. They are both very much overwhelmed by grief but both handle it differently after all Leila is still a child when the tragedy happens. Hassan seemed quite closed off and this made it more difficult to judge his character and his personality but on the other hand Leila is strong and knows her own mind and what she wants to do. I liked her very much and empathised with her much more freely and her struggle for her father to love her as much as her sister.
The author has done a great job of giving Hassan and Leila distinctive voices and I even had a picture of them built in my head, the periphery characters were also excellently drawn. This is a truly captivating book and when Kate Rigby puts pen to paper a little bit of magic happens.
This book would make a great book club choice as there is plenty that would be open for discussion and I was left with some questions of my own upon finishing the book.
A really great and accomplished novel from a talented writer.
About the Author:
Kate
Rigby was born near Liverpool and now lives in the south west of England.
She’s been writing for nearly forty years, with a few small successes along the
way, although she has long term health conditions. Having been traditionally
published, small press published and she is now indie published.
She
realized her unhip credentials were mounting so she decided to write about it.
Little Guide to Unhip was first published in 2010 and it has since been
updated.
However,
she’s not completely unhip. Her punk novel, Fall Of The Flamingo Circus was
published by Allison & Busby (1990) and by Villard (American hardback
1990). Skrev Press published her novels Seaview Terrace (2003) Sucka!(2004) and
Break Point (2006) and other shorter work has appeared in Skrev’s avant garde
magazine Texts’ Bones.
Thalidomide
Kid was published by Bewrite Books (2007).
She has
had other short stories published and shortlisted including Hard Workers and
Headboards, first published in The Diva Book of Short Stories and as part of
the Dancing In The Dark erotic anthology, Pfoxmoor Publishing (2011). Hard
Workers is to republished for a third time - in an anthology called ‘Condoms
& Hot Tubs Don’t Mix’ - an anthology of Sexcapades - which is due to be
published by Beating Windward Press in the US in February 2018. It is her
shortest ever story and yet the most popular in that sense! All proceeds
will go towards planned parenthood.
She
also received a Southern Arts bursary for her novel Where A Shadow Played (now
re-Kindled as Did You Whisper Back?).
More
information can be found at her website:
Or her occasional blog:
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Thank you so much for your thoughts and lovely review, Leah. I'm so glad it resonated with you :)
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