The Stationery Shop – Marjan Kamali (2019)

Wandering around the library stacks the other day, I ended up in K’s in Fiction and, in trying to find another book, came across this one and its really lovely book cover. (Gorgeous colors! It mentions stationery!) Not being familiar with either the title or the name of the author, I read the cover copy and was intrigued. It was a library book. It was by a person other than a white one. And I was in the mood for something from another country, regardless which country that was. So – with nowt to lose, I checked this copy out.

So what’s it about? It’s fiction set in Iran in both 1953 and present day (2013), and focuses on the lives of two characters in particular: two young people (in 1953) whose lives were impacted and interrupted by both Iran’s revolution and its cultural mores.

Kamali’s plot revolves around the stationery shop in the title and its bookseller owner as he comes into contact with his customers. It’s quite a clever structure to make the whole plot revolve around this handful of characters who overlap with this bookkeeper in some way, so it was an effective approach.

Two young Iranian lovers arrange to meet and get married at a certain time and at a certain place. To their dismay, their meeting location also turns out to be the same place as where a large political demonstration occurs at that very same time. Chaos ensues, the couple miss each other, wonder what happen but go on to live their lives apart anyway. Much regret of each about the lost opportunity but life sorts itself out – until…. Pivot. Then comes the twist.

Structurally, the book has some jumping around in it, flipping (as it does) from the chaos of the ongoing revolution in 1953 to modern-day Iran and the US, and at first, I had it fairly sorted out but, as the book continued (and I must admit, I let some days pass in between readings), the time jumps were a little disorienting for me. Linked with that, it seemed as though there were an inordinate number of intimately-related characters who kept popping up.

I admit. It could have been my fault for having a Monkey Mind and for letting a few days pass (and brain cells live and die) between the reading. It wasn’t that it wasn’t well written or anything bad like that because when I finished the read, it was as a satisfied reader. So no doubt it’s a good book, but I think I had to sort of gear myself up a bit to refocus on all the strands of the plot and to try and weave some unity out of it all.

Although this might sound like rather a lukewarm review, this was a book that I ended up enjoying after I’d read it all, as opposed to during the actual reading process. I would certainly pick up another of Kamali’s books if that tells you something! 🙂