Contemporary Authors

• A Word for Love ( novel) Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 2017

1. A word for love LCCN 2016011439 Type of material Book Personal name Robbins, Emily, author. Main title A word for love / Emily Robbins. Published/Produced New York : Riverhead Books, 2017. Description 293 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9781594633584 (hardcover) 9780735211926 (softcover) CALL NUMBER PS3618.O315234 W67 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• The National (AE) - http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life/books/a-word-for-love-showcases-american-author-emily-robbinss-love-for-damascus#full

  A Word for Love is a love story set in the city of Damascus, and the book, according to its author Emily Robbins, also aims to dispel the negative notions about Syria. Photo by Brian McConkey
  A Word for Love showcases American author Emily Robbins’s love for Damascus
  Ben East

  January 17, 2017 Updated: January 17, 2017 03:37 PM

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  Plenty of writers have attempted to make sense of the tragedy that is Syria, with Khaled Khalifa (In Praise of Hatred), Samar Yazbek (The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria) and Nihad Sirees (The Silence and the Roar) just three brilliant examples.

  It is surprising, encouraging even, that the latest author we can add to that list is a 30-something American whose debut is essentially a love story set on the cusp, but largely before the unrest. There are no tanks, fighter jets or even references to specific Syrian cities in A Word for Love.

  But Emily Robbins has a quick answer for anyone who thinks she might be a westerner airbrushing nearly six years of turmoil.

  "We now see Syria as a place only of violence," she says. "But anyone who has spent any time there knows it’s so much more than that. We need a reminder of what is at stake."

  Arabic-speaker Robbins spent a lot of time in Syria, first as an exchange student and then learning the Quran with Houda Al Habash’s women’s mosque movement, which shot to fame in the award-winning 2011 documentary The Light in Her Eyes.

  And while her experiences are not exactly replicated in A Word for Love, they certainly provided her with the tone and feel of the story, which is narrated by an American exchange student called Bea.

  Caught up in the lives of her host family, and a Romeo and Juliet-esque romance between a policeman and an Indonesian maid, Bea comes of age as secrets, impending war and an ancient tale – dubbed The Astonishing Text – all intertwine.

  "It’s a love story on two levels, because it’s also about how to love a city and a language, neither of which are truly your own," she says. "When I was first learning Arabic, I really fell for the famous story of Qais and Leila, and the idea that once Qais falls in love he takes on her name.

  "The idea that language and love can point to a new identity was really exciting to me. And it felt like Arabic, with its beautiful roots and meanings, gave me a whole new vocabulary to work with."

  Robbins clearly has high ambitions for her debut – she admits she wanted to write dialogue like Ernest Hemingway and have the understanding of place that Samar Yazbek’s A Woman in the Crossfire so beautifully offers.

  She inevitably falls short of both grand aims. Nevertheless, A Word for Love remains an important book, if only because it is likely to be read by a western audience who perhaps need to be reminded that Syria exists as more than a news headline.

  "I’m also excited and a little apprehensive about how it might be received in the Middle East," she says, ahead of its publication in Jordan (where Robbins will return next month to complete a Fulbright Fellowship and her second novel).

  "What I do know is that people who read Arabic and understand the region seem excited that this is a different narrative about Syria. They can see how deeply I feel about Damascus – and that’s very important for them right now."

  The country isn’t explicitly mentioned in the book at all, even though the publisher’s website loudly proclaims the arrival of "a mesmerising debut set in Syria".

  "Syria had been part of the book for years," says Robbins. "And when it finally sold, I came to an understanding that this was a story that could transcend Syria, that could be about anywhere that people love, in which there is unrest, in which people are speaking out about what’s important to them. "Basically, it was a story that came out of my love for Damascus – but I didn’t want to be in a position to be asked to speak for Damascus. As a foreigner, that would feel wrong when there are so many Syrian voices speaking so well." Robbins has kept in touch with some of them. Far from lamenting with her host families about the "mess" that Syria is in, Robbins says she feels a sense of hope that the troubled but vibrant country described in the book might some day return.

  "When the revolution started, I was back in America, and I remember feeling excitement, worry and admiration for all the Syrians who were very bravely speaking out at that time," she says.

  "The book became a way to return to Syria in my head, to think through a place that I loved and was changing so quickly. "Now, I just have to hope that Syrian love stories can still happen, still be written about."

  It is surely a matter of some sadness that such a turnaround seems unlikely any time soon.

  "Well, I was recently talking to one of my host fathers, who had worked against the government before the revolution," says Robbins. "I asked him after all that’s happened whether he regretted that decision. This is a man now in exile, but he said: ‘No, but we have no choice but to move forward with hope’.

  "So that was very powerful for me. It made me feel that if he felt that way, then I must, too."

  • A Word for Love is out now

  artslife@thenational.ae

• Penguin Random House - http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/232810/emily-robbins

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Emily Robbins has lived and worked across the Middle East and North Africa. From 2007 to 2008, she was a Fulbright Fellow in Syria, where she studied religion and language with a women’s mosque movement and lived with the family of a leading intellectual. Robbins holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and and in 2016 she received a second Fulbright, to study in Jordan. She lives in Chicago and Brownsville, Texas.

• New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/fashion/modern-love-grappling-with-the-language-of-love.html

  Grappling With the Language of Love
  Modern Love
  By EMILY ROBBINS NOV. 11, 2016
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  Credit Brian Rea
  We often hear about how hard it is to be articulate in a foreign language, but when I began to study Arabic, what took me a long time to learn was not how to speak but how to listen.

  Looking back, I see that my inability to listen well cost me my first love.

  The man I loved was an Iraqi doctor. Young like me, he had been forced out of his country by war and had come to Syria to work in a refugee camp. This was in 2008, before the revolution.

  I was in Syria to study Arabic. We met in that camp, and for the next year we were constantly falling in and out of love, breaking up and getting back together, pouring out our hearts and fighting, mostly because of all he wanted to tell me was that I didn’t understand.

  We did this in Arabic, his first and my second language. The doctor and I were both alone in Damascus. He claimed he loved me from the moment we first spoke because I had asked him a question. This meant I was curious and ready to learn.

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  I don’t remember my question. What I remember is the dust, which was overwhelming, and the sun, which would not stop beating, and all the patched white tents, which spread out from the doctor’s ambulance like the petals of a flower.

  I went into the ambulance to get out of the sun. The doctor was rocking a crying baby, and when he touched it, the baby quieted and fell asleep. I thought: I want this man to like me as much as I like him. But I didn’t have strong Arabic, so I simply gazed at the doctor and he gazed back.

  After, he called me. We met in a cafe. He sent me a poem. I didn’t understand the poem, which didn’t matter; we were headed for love.

  I was a beginner in Arabic. I loved it and was trying to learn. I knew the word for “hospital” but not “emergency,” “love” but not “passion,” “war” but not “civil war.”

  The doctor and I wanted to be writers, so in our free time we studied how to be eloquent. Sometimes I asked, “How can you love me when I speak inarticulate Arabic?”

  He assured me that he heard past my poorly constructed sentences to the beauty within. We didn’t worry about whether I found him articulate, because Arabic was his first language. We had not yet learned the lesson that vocabulary limits not just how well you speak but how well you listen.

  We expected me to be inarticulate and him to be eloquent. We loved specificity and detail, and the doctor used great detail in his stories. But my Arabic vocabulary was blunt and broad, so I heard him as being blunt and broad.

  We went to a lecture. In the middle, the doctor wrote on my paper: “You look beautiful in your glasses.”

  I didn’t know the word for glasses, so I read: “You beautiful.”

  He wrote: “I imagine you in a bath of rose petals.”

  I didn’t know the word for rose petals, so I read, “You bath.” Did I stink?

  We learn the words we most need. I had grown up in a small, sheltered town, so my vocabulary for war was limited. But war had colored the doctor’s work, his home, his first love (not me) and his sense of purpose.

  “I remember the bombs that fell on the emergency room,” he said, and I understood there had been a bomb but not how close it was to the hospital or how he had worked through the terror, his hands shaking.

  Our troubles worsened when the doctor called and told me something while I was at work, but I didn’t understand and was in the middle of something, so I said I was busy, could he call back?

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  Later, when we reconnected, he said: “You have no heart. I told you the camp caught fire. People were hurt. Two lost their homes. And you said, ‘Call back later, I’m busy’?”

  My heart sank. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Do you ever hear me?”

  Of course, there are many ways to hear a person; it doesn’t always have to be in speech. That night, though, we got stuck on words.

  Afterward, we still saw each other, but it was not the same. Soon my grant ended and I went home.

  I thought it must not have really been love. How could the doctor love me when I didn’t understand him? And if I could not understand him or know him completely, how could I love him back?

  This was my belief for years. I still sometimes heard from the doctor, but we were far away, an ocean between us, and I no longer believed we had really loved.

  Then I met the man who would become my husband, a student with long hair who had come to the United States from Brazil to learn biology. When he rode up on a bicycle to the building where I lived, my heart almost stopped. He knew all the scientific terms in English but didn’t know simple words like “believe” or “comb.”

  And yet after we met, I only wanted to be with him. I wanted to pour out my heart, to talk and to listen. And if anyone ever questioned our love (because it happened so quickly, over two months), or if he had ever questioned my devotion (because we did not speak the same language fluently), it would have ripped straight through my heart.

  So I found myself in the doctor’s position. And I learned that sometimes it can be enough just to speak the words, regardless of whether your lover understands them; that sometimes merely wanting to speak is enough.

  The doctor had once said, “You know me like I know you, and if you don’t, then someday you will.” He had had faith in the future.

  I loved the way my husband looked when he was listening. He made up games that didn’t require language. He didn’t write poetry in English but he drew pictures on scraps of paper and left them about the house for me, and in this way, I knew what he felt.

  What had I done to show I cared for the doctor?

  Over the years, I continued studying Arabic and my language grew. When I began to translate for people from war-torn countries, I gained a specialized vocabulary.

  Armed with my new vocabulary, I went back to the doctor’s poems. I took them out of their old box, one by one. To my delight, I found that the doctor was eloquent; he wrote with precision and conviction.

  I went back to his story about the bombing and understood now how in the middle of surgery his hands were shaking so hard that he had not known if he could finish. But there was a patient before him, so he steeled himself and saw it through, and the patient survived. The bravery of this.

  I learned terrible things. About the exact ways he had been tortured and beaten. About the strangeness of death threats he had received simply because he was good at his work. I learned that sometimes to be good is the most dangerous thing.

  And finally, after so many years, I learned his sense of beauty. He wrote a poem about a jasmine flower that bloomed while wedged between dust and the ice of a wintery desert.

  Whether he meant this flower to be us no longer mattered. What mattered was that his words lasted, as beautiful now as then. His words had kept until I could listen and understand. Years after the doctor and I had fallen out of love, I finally knew him.

  He is now married and lives in Sweden, where he works for the Red Cross. Soon after I left Syria, he got in trouble for his politics and was forced to flee. A refugee with an uncertain passport, he made the precarious journey up through Turkey, across the sea in an unstable boat — five years before thousands of Syrian refugees, fleeing their own war, would make the same trip.

  He still writes poems, which used to air on the local radio and were so popular that people would call in and ask for “The Love Doctor.” I listened to the show, using my dictionary to look up the hard words.

  Maybe, in the end, his poems are the gift of our romance, along with this lesson: Even years later we can learn from a relationship. There is no deadline for understanding. And that just as one can love intuitively, without language, one can also revel, years later, in the perfect meaning of a once-spoken, misunderstood word.

  Emily Robbins’s debut novel, “A Word for Love,” will be published in January.

  To contact Modern Love, email modernlove@nytimes.com.

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  A version of this article appears in print on November 13, 2016, on Page ST6 of the New York edition with the headline: What Language Does Love Speak?. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

• Hazlitt - http://hazlitt.net/feature/we-need-art-remind-us-what-stake-interview-emily-robbins

  ‘We Need Art to Remind Us of What is At Stake’: An Interview with Emily Robbins
  BY AMY BRADY
  The author of A Word for Love on Syria, how we reveal ourselves through language, and love as a place of tension.
  Related Books
  Interview
  MARCH 24, 2017

  AMY BRADY
  Amy is a Senior Editor at the Chicago Review of Books. Her work has appeared in The...

  Citadel of Aleppo before the conflict in Syria, via Wikimedia
  Emily Robbins may not have become the writer she is had she not lived for a time in Syria. She stayed with host families on a Fulbright Fellowship, and one of her host fathers was a writer—the first professional writer whom she got to know well. Just before her arrival, he’d lost his job for criticizing the Syrian government. The gravity of the fact was not lost on her—it taught her that words hold power and that writing can have consequences.

  Robbins lived in Syria between 2007 and 2008, approximately three years before the beginning of the first anti-regime uprising that would eventually lead to civil war. Her deeply affecting debut novel, A Word for Love, takes place in Syria at roughly the same time. Its lead protagonist, Bea, is an American exchange student who has travelled to the country to read The Astonishing Text, an ancient manuscript said to contain a love story so stirring it brings its readers to tears. But the text remains elusive, so she spends her days practicing Arabic and becoming increasingly entwined in the lives of her host family. The father becomes more involved in rebellious activities, while Nisrine, the family’s maid, falls in love with a Syrian policeman—a circumstance that leads to violent confrontations. As Bea watches Nisrine’s clandestine relationship grow, she learns how different languages can both close and create cultural gaps while at the same time reveal new facets of love she never knew existed.

  Here, Syria is more than a war-torn nation—it’s a site of longing, love, and intellectual rigor. Robbins’s fascination with linguistics (she speaks at least three languages and has worked as a translator) further permeates this story. The roots of Arabic words, Bea teaches us, add layers of meaning to each utterance in the language. And as she listens to Nisrine speak about her family, Bea hears subtle shifts in conjunctions that lend crucial insight into the maid’s psychology.

  I went into this interview with thinking that we’d discuss primarily A Word for Love, but soon it became clear that Robbins’s affinity for language was just as thought-provoking.

  Amy Brady: With conflicts in Syria growing even more violent and fractious and the refugee crisis becoming even more critical, A Word for Love feels extremely timely. What drew you to this setting and why did you choose to set the novel at the onset of war instead of in its midst?

  Emily Robbins: I started writing A Word for Love before the war began. When the first protests broke out, I was six months into the novel and felt utterly inspired by the bravery of the men and women who were standing up to their government. I wanted to share these feelings with those around me, but I lived far away in St. Louis, and so writing became a way for me to return in my mind to Syria, a place that I loved and that was quickly changing. It became something I turned to in hopeful and then difficult times.

  As this war wages on, I think it is easy to see Syria only for its violence. But, Syrians and foreigners who have lived there can tell you it is so much more than that. I think we need art and literature that is set in Syria before the war even more now, to remind us of the country’s rich history and beauty, and the bravery of its people; to remind us of what is at stake, that if we lose Syria we risk losing all this.

  Given the current war in Syria, I admit that I was surprised to discover that A Word for Love is much more about love than violence. What led you to this focus?

  I am a lover of love stories; and, because I lived in Syria between the ages of 21 to 23, many of my early loves happened there. I have never thought of Syria as a violent place, and so it didn’t occur to me to write a story that focuses on violence. To me, love is a place of tension: in a first love, so much is at stake even in the smallest interactions, and therefore it can reveal so much. In love, words matter so much (we hang on our lover’s every word) and also so little (who cares about words? Let’s kiss!). So for that reason, because I’m interested in exploring the many sides of cultural exchange and of language, love seems like a perfect fit.

  Bea is an American exchange student in Syria. Is Bea you?

  While I don’t feel that I am Bea, it is true that I was a foreign exchange student in Syria (over the time I was there, I lived with two different families) and that one of the families I lived with also employed an Indonesian maid. From her, I learned almost everything I know about Indonesia; her love for her country gave me a love for a place that I have never been. Navigating my role in this family was difficult and left me with more questions than answers, and I think out of those questions came the seeds of A Word for Love.

  For someone who studies languages, Bea is often quiet, preferring others to speak for her. Did this tension between silence and language prove difficult to write about?

  One of the most challenging parts of writing this book was growing Bea’s voice. She’s understated in her feelings, and so figuring out how to stretch her voice to encompass what I wanted to say was not easy—that is, if you want to convey an emotion, with a narrator like Bea, that’s not always something you can do outright. So, she made revisions difficult. For a while she was so difficult that I tried writing in third person, but it lost something when I removed Bea’s voice; it was a good life lesson for me: what is difficult is often also necessary.

  Does The Astonishing Text really exist? Have you seen it?

  No, it doesn’t! At least, not in the form that it does in the book. However, the story of Qais and Leila, which the text tells, does exist—it is a famous love story in both Arabic and Farsi, and people really do know it and love it the way I grew up loving Romeo and Juliet. I first read a version of Qais and Leila in my Arabic class-reader. That is how well-known the story is—it is even taught to foreigners, and I loved it for the way it played with language from the first.

  Apart from that, written Arabic is well known for its beauty, and as an art-form. The idea of The Astonishing Text takes inspiration from Arabic calligraphy artists, and also from the illuminated Islamic texts of the past, which recognized that a written word can also be art. I really have seen Arabic words fit onto a grain of rice. All this—the story of Qais and Leila, and my own love of illuminated texts and calligraphy, combined with the question, what is fluency? create The Astonishing Text.

  Language plays such a complex role in this story. Your novel tells us that there is not one, but ninety-nine words for love in Arabic, and later, language comes to signify (to Bea at least) shifts in other people’s emotional states. What draws you to linguistic study?

  Language has always fascinated me, perhaps for how we reveal ourselves through it, and also for the gap between who we are in our head, and what we sound like out loud. Before I was a writer, I studied Anthropology; because of this, I have always been interested in the battles we fight through speech. Since the age of eighteen, I have learned three languages by immersion, (the last being my husband’s native Portuguese), and so as a result, I have spent many years of my adult life in various states of speechlessness, struggling with meaning, and trying to find the right words to express myself. Because learning to think in a new language takes away some of the intuitiveness of speech, it can also allow us to step back and examine what else goes on beneath a sentence; where the tension lies, both in the words and the room. Unexpected sources of tension are useful for writers.

  When you are learning a new language by immersion, then it really does take over your life. You are only as interesting, and you can only think and understand as deeply, as your vocabulary in this new language will allow. Learning languages gives us so much, but in the moment it can also feel very limiting. So, I suppose to write a book about a foreign exchange student, I had to include language. It marks the limits of her world.

  In what ways do you think the act of switching between languages—either in speech or in writing—shifts how we perceive the world around us?

  I think it helps us know our limits; learning other languages helped me to love my own; to value how easily I could slip back into English.

  Learning Arabic especially opened up my world to whole other ways of making meaning. In gaining knowledge of Arabic, I gained a new alphabet, new shapes to make on a page, new sounds. And Arabic’s grammar is so complete and so graceful. Arabic words are made up of three-letter roots; from those roots, you can make many, many words which all trace their history back to those three letters, and so are in some way related. Learning about the relationship between words in Arabic changed the way I looked at words in English. In this way, it had a profound effect on my writing.

  Arabic, sadly, is an unusual choice of language for many Americans to pick up. What inspired you to learn it?

  I had a cousin who was passionate about studying Arabic before me. I started learning it because of her. And then, very quickly, it became a language whose structure and patterns resonated with me, and which I loved.

  Does your translation work affect your writing? Or vice versa?

  I feel like in many ways A Word for Love is a work in translation. Certainly, it takes up questions of language and meaning that a translator grapples with. It includes a poem in translation. But apart from that, in many ways it is a very loose retelling of an Arabic story—Qais and Leila. Of course, re-telling and translation are often two separate arts today. However, they haven’t always been so separate. To me, many of the questions this novel deals with are a translator’s questions, including: What will Americans reading about Syria understand?

  When I lived in Chicago, I was an interpreter—that is, an oral translator. I have also translated poems, but those are mostly for myself (though one translation made it into A Word for Love). Reading Arabic has been a great influence on my writing. However, one of the things I love about interpreting (not literary translation, which is its own art form) is that unlike writing fiction, I don’t have to think about what to say: someone else comes up with the sentence, and I switch it to a different language. Interpreting is a break from having my own ideas.

  Do you read any Syrian authors? Which would you recommend?

  My favorite poet is Syrian—Nizar Qabbani. He wrote beautiful, beautiful love poems, which remind me a little of Pablo Neruda. Khaled Khalifa is also a wonderful contemporary voice. I also want to mention two new voices who are not Syrian, but are of the region and deserve a hearing. Basma Abdel Aziz’s novel, The Queue, came out in English last year, and it is one of the strangest and most incredible novels (and translations!) I’ve recently read. Abdel Aziz is Egyptian, not Syrian, but her novel takes place in an unnamed, parallel world, and its subjects—dictatorship, revolution’s aftermath, love—speak somewhat to Syria’s current situation. Also, a book called We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is due out in June. It is a compilation of hundreds of interviews with Syrians, conducted over the course of many years by Middle East scholar Wendy Pearlman. Wendy is a brilliant scholar, and these interviews are larger in scale than any other project on Syria I know of. Needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting it.

  How did your time in Syria shape you as a writer?

  I lived in Syria at a very formative time in my life, and I lived with brave people. They shaped much of my idea of what it is to be a good person in the world, and an adult. One of my host fathers was the first writer I ever saw at work and knew well. And so, he taught me something about how one goes about becoming a writer. He had lost his job for criticizing government policies in his writing. It was a lesson to me not only in how one writes for a living, but also in the power of words and their consequences.

  Living in Syria also shaped me as a writer, because it turned my attention to small details (the different ways there are of cutting vegetables, the uses of various kitchen sponges, what everyone wore) in order to fit in. Because fitting in is in the details, foreigners often become attuned to small moments of daily life. In that way, I began practicing looking at the world with the eye of a writer—one whose fictional world is also made in the details. Once I began looking at life this way, it was hard to stop.

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  AMY BRADY
  Amy is a Senior Editor at the Chicago Review of Books. Her work has appeared in The Village Voice, Literary Hub, The Awl, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, and other places. She live in New York City.

• Story Studio Chicago - https://www.storystudiochicago.com/introducing-emily-robbins/

  INTRODUCING EMILY ROBBINS
  January 12, 2016
  By
  StoryStudio Chicago

  Last week, we talked to a brand new StoryStudio instructor, Emily Maloney. This week, we’re happy to bring you another great conversation with another exciting new addition to the StoryStudio team, Emily Robbins!

  Emily Robbins has an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and a forthcoming novel with Riverhead Books. With a background as an anthropologist and experience reading, writing, and translating fiction around the world, Emily is sure to bring a unique perspective to her upcoming class, Making Your Fiction Matter.

  Emily took the time to share with us some fun facts about her life and work, and some thoughts about writing great fiction– and sticking to a routine.

  sleeveless shirt author

  StoryStudio Chicago: Welcome to StoryStudio, and to Chicago! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the kind of writing you do?

  Emily Robbins: I grew up in New Mexico, Oregon and Montana, but I have family all over, and have lived in many countries and many states. Before becoming a fiction writer, I trained as an anthropologist and lived in Syria; this gave me a love of language and culture that influences much of my current work. I am still very attached to my studies in Arabic and the Middle East; they inspired my first novel. We came to Chicago for my husband’s work. He’s an evolutionary biologist. We aren’t very new anymore, but we’ve grown to love Chicago, especially the lake in summer!

  SSC: You have a novel forthcoming from Riverhead Books. First, congrats! Second, can you give us the scoop on it?

  ER: Thank you! The novel is called A Word for Love. Set in an unnamed foreign country, though based lightly on Syria, it’s the story of a young American woman who arrives in search of an “Astonishing Text” — said to make its best readers weep, but finds herself caught instead in the lives of her host family and a Romeo & Juliet-like romance that ultimately teaches her about love, loyalty and herself, and changes her reading of everything.

  In some ways, it’s a story about language and devotion, about what it means to love from afar, to be an outsider within a love story, and to take someone else’s passion and cradle it until it becomes your own. It’s due out Fall 2016.

  SSC: In addition to writing fiction, you also do translation, and you speak Spanish, Arabic, and Portuguese. What’s it like doing translations as a creative writer? Has your knowledge of these languages affected the way you write fiction at all?

  ER: Oh yes, very much! I love all three of these languages. I feel they have opened up my imagination and my world. Arabic especially plays an integral role in my fiction. The story of A Word for Love is inspired by an ancient Arabic folktale, Qais and Leila, which I learned myself as a student, and which always struck me for the beautiful way it combines language and love.

  Apart from a love of written translation, I sometimes do oral translations for NGOs that work with Arabic-speakers in Chicago, and so in that way, knowing other languages has helped to broaden my community here.

  SSC: You came to us with the idea for your upcoming class, “Making Your Fiction Matter.” What made you want to teach a class on this topic? Why is it an important topic for fiction writers?

  ER: I myself feel that I engage most authentically with the world through fiction. Reading and writing have always been a form of processing for me, and also my most natural form of action. Sometimes, we fiction writers especially feel there is an uncrossable divide between fiction and politics, but writing is inherently political, as it allows readers another perspective on the world. We are often very conscious about developing elements of craft — characterization, setting, plot. But our fiction’s engagement with the world — how to create more complex characters, by letting the events of their world move them, how to allow setting to increase tension — is equally as important. So, I wanted to base a workshop around that.

  SSC: Who should take “Making Your Fiction Matter”?

  ER: Anyone who is interested in writing complex characters, and who loves thinking deeply about how they’re rendering a fictional world. Anyone who wants to think more deeply about the way the world works on their writing, and vice versa. Anyone who loves fiction, and experimentation!

  SSC: What are you reading right now?

  ER: Clarice Lispector’s short stories. And I’m eagerly awaiting The Queue, by Egyptian author Basma Abdel Aziz, which is forthcoming in English this March, and Anton Disclafani’s novel, The Afterparty.

  SSC: Who are some writers who have influenced or inspired you?

  ER: Marilyn Robinson, Kathryn Davis, Rebecca Makkai, Orhan Pamuk, Christine Schutt, Tiphanie Yanique.

  SSC: Do you have a favorite place and/or time of day to write?

  ER: In the morning, at home or at the Writer’s Workspace. I need quiet to write, so I feel very lucky to have these two places!

  SSC: What advice do you have for aspiring writers? Was there ever a particularly great piece of writing advice that someone gave to you?

  ER: A wonderful teacher, Saher Alam, once described revision not as editing, but as the act of re-imagining. I love that, and try always to approach revisions with this in mind.

  I think the two most important things to me as a writer are habit and community. I write novels, which require a lot of perseverance, long after inspiration has left. So, it has been important to me to just keep sitting down each day at a scheduled time. Now, I find my writing schedule grounds me. I feel unmoored without it. And to know that I don’t write alone — sharing ideas and experience with other writer-friends has been invaluable.

  Want to further explore fiction writing with Emily? Register today for Making Your Fiction Matter, starting January 21st!

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• Signature - http://www.signature-reads.com/2017/01/syria-knew-writers-reflections/

  INTERVIEWS
  The Syria I Knew: A Writer’s Reflections
  By KRISTIN FRITZ
  January 17, 2017
  SHARE
  View of Damascus, Syria/Photo © Shutterstock
  In her debut novel, A Word for Love, author Emily Robbins introduces us to Bea, an American exchange student living in Syria. Bea has set out on this adventure because of her fascination with the Arabic language – and before long, she becomes as fascinated by her host family, with whose lives she is steadily more and more intertwined during her stay. In writing this novel, Robbins tapped into the knowledge and experience she gained during her own time in the Middle East. From 2007 to 2008, she was a Fulbright Fellow in Syria, where she studied religion and language with a women’s mosque movement and lived with the family of a leading intellectual. We caught up with Robbins to talk about Syria as it was and as it is today, the conception of her novel, the responsibility of the writer, and more.
  BUY THE BOOK

  A Word for Love
  by Emily Robbins
  BARNES & NOBLE
  INDIEBOUND
  AMAZON
  IBOOKS
  SIGNATURE: Your debut novel, A Word for Love, is set in Syria. You have spent ample time in the country, especially in the years just prior to the Civil War. Tell us about the Syria that you came to know. What was it like to live and study there?
  EMILY ROBBINS: It is hard to think back to that time and find an answer that isn’t colored by what’s happened since. But, I remember Damascus as being utterly beautiful – especially when seen from a hill above, or in the old city. Also very different from the small towns I was used to in the U.S. My impression of Damascus depended so much on the people who were around me. I happened to be around artists and activists. Activism was quite dangerous in Syria before the war (as it is now), and so that sense of danger – the fact that art was censored, and so one had to be brave to speak one’s opinion – that colored my sense of the country, but also taught me much about speaking out, and the bravery of both big and small acts, and what can be at stake.
  At the same time, Syria before the war was a place with a lot of life, diversity, and beauty. One thing I think most Americans don’t realize is that Syria has been a haven for foreigners for thousands of years. Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world; it is on the old silk routes, and so from its beginning it has been a center for trade, attracting people from all over the world. I have been reading earlier travelers’ accounts of Damascus recently, and almost all of them remark on how breathtakingly beautiful the city was, and on the strength of its art and craftsmanship.
  SIG: Was it during that time that the story in A Word for Love began to take shape? What else played into the inspiration for this novel?
  ER: I began to think about the story for A Word for Love when I was a Fulbright researcher in Damascus. However, it was only written years afterwards. Before becoming a writer, I studied anthropology. These studies gave me a love of language and culture that influences much of my fiction, and certainly influenced this book. It was an anthropology professor who first told me that students of anthropology could write fiction. Later, I learned about writers like Amitav Ghosh who did just that, and so instead of applying to doctoral programs in anthropology, I applied to MFAs, to try to write a novel. That novel became A Word for Love.
  SIG: How much of yourself is in Bea, the American exchange student living in Syria around whom A Word for Love revolves?
  ER: Both a lot and nothing! Bea was a difficult narrator for me, because there is so much she doesn’t say outright – the puzzle is always trying to figure out, how can I express this? How might Bea come at it? Determining how to do that was also the fun."The Syria I knew was a unique and diverse place, full of people who think and love deeply..."
  TWEET THIS QUOTE
  Living in Syria, I did not face the same difficult decisions that Bea faces in the novel, nor was I faced with extreme consequences, either for my actions or inaction, like she is. It is true, though, that I was a foreign exchange student in Syria; that was how I gained my knowledge of day-to-day life in Damascus, and I drew on it.
  SIG: A Western writer faces an immense challenge in presenting to American audiences a portrait of the Middle East, as so many Westerners have never and will never set foot there. In today’s political climate especially, understanding these places outside of how they might exist within stereotypes or misinformation is essential. Were you at all intimidated by taking on this challenge? How did you manage it?
  ER: When I began writing A Word for Love, I set out to write about subjects that interested me – love, unrest, and language. Syria was the place that I knew well in my early twenties, and it was where I learned many of my lessons about these subjects, so it seemed the natural setting for this book.
  Of course, I have thought often about the political ramifications of writing about a place that is now at war (it wasn’t yet when I started), and of being a foreigner and American writing about the Middle East, with all the great history of exploitation that that relationship entails. I do not think that that is a reason not to write, only to write better and more consciously.
  As this war wages on, the way Syria is perceived in much of the world is changing. It is tempting to look at Syria now, and see only violence. However, those who are from Syria and who have lived there can tell you that it is so much more. The Syria I knew was a unique and diverse place, full of people who think and love deeply, and I wanted the novel I wrote to reflect this. For the very reasons you mention, now more than ever we need many narratives about Syria, so that it’s not reduced to just one – so that neither my story nor any other is taken as representing the “whole” Syria. There are many authors now – Syrian and foreign – who are setting their stories there, and I am grateful and very proud to be one of them.
  SIG: Language – poetry, the learning of, the dictatorial limitations on – plays such an important part in your novel. In this digital age, do you worry about the sacrifice of language for convenience? Is there anything we (as a general population) need to be doing more of in order to preserve the beauty and complexity of language?
  ER: Honestly, I don’t worry about that. We now have more and more means of communication. This doesn’t mean that the more traditional forms need to be lost. What it does mean is that every new form of communication provides a new opportunity for experimentation with language. There is a classic short story by Robin Hemley called “Reply All,” which takes the form of a series of emails. I love this story. It wouldn’t have been written without the coming of the digital age – nor would have the blog Riverbend, which helped people around the world better understand day-to-day life during the occupation of Iraq. Though of course I worry about screen-time, I am very grateful to the digital age for bringing me these two pieces – and so much else.
  SIG: Speaking of language, your use of written dialogue is stunning. Are there any rules you follow either unconsciously or consciously in portraying conversation well that you might offer up to other writers?
  ER: Thank you! I don’t know if it’s helped me write dialogue, but I talk out loud while I write. It makes it very hard to work in public places (any of my roommates and my husband can attest to this)!
  I also used to engage in strange writing experiments. I remember for a whole year of my life – between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-four – I wrote nothing but dialogue. Not a single descriptive sentence, and not a single metaphor. This did not lead to any good stories that year; however, I like to think it trained my ear. Dialogue hasn’t been a source of fear for me since then – metaphors have been.
  SIG: Congratulations on your second Fulbright, which is taking you to Jordan for your studies. What do you expect of your time there?
  ER: I’m in the middle of the Fulbright right now! I applied to research a novel set in the nineteenth century, and that is what I’m doing. I’m learning much about fashion and material culture of the 1800s, which I adore.
  SIG: It’s apparent that the Middle East holds much appeal for you. Why is that? What about it do you find draws you in?
  ER: I first went to Syria to study Arabic because I had an older cousin who had been passionate about it. So in the beginning, traveling to the Middle East was a way of being part of my family in the U.S. I have always loved learning languages – it has always been a passion of mine, and when I starting learning Arabic, it quickly became something I did for myself. As a writer, I find it extremely helpful whenever I can leave my own language and look at it from outside, or live in a different one. Learning Arabic gave me a whole new vocabulary and way of thinking, and it also allowed me to reflect more deeply on English – on the connections we make between words, and those we don’t.
  SIG: What’s next for you in your writing life?
  ER: Hopefully, another novel. That is what I am working towards.

• A Word for Love site - http://awordforlove.com/

  Emily Robbins has lived and worked across the Middle East and North Africa. From 2007 to 2008, she was a Fulbright Fellow in Syria, where she studied religion and language with a women’s mosque movement, and lived with the family of a leading intellectual. Robbins holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. In 2016, she received a second Fulbright to study in Jordan.

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Print Marked Items
Emily Robbins: A WORD FOR LOVE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Emily Robbins A WORD FOR LOVE Riverhead (Adult Fiction) 27.00 ISBN: 978­1­59463­358­4
In Robbins’; debut, an American student of Arabic gets lessons in love and loss when she goes to study in the
Middle East.Bea has come to an unnamed foreign city to read an ancient text “;that made everyone who read it
cry, it was that astonishing.”; It tells the story of a Bedouin named Qais and his doomed love for the beautiful
Leila, so when she hears a member of the family she is living with describe the blond policeman she glimpses in the
station across the street from their apartment as “;a real Qais,”; Bea is intrigued. She has fallen in
love with Arabic, we sense from allusions skillfully planted in the early chapters, because her life in America seems
too safe and devoid of deep feeling. She has a crush on handsome Adel (the policeman) before she’;s even met
him, but when it becomes clear that he’;s interested in the family’;s maid, Nisrine—;who has a
husband and son back home in Indonesia—;Bea passively accepts his choice. This is characteristic of her
behavior throughout the novel, as Bea describes Madame; her husband, Baba; their three children; Nisrine; and Adel as
though they were characters in an exotic play she was observing rather than participating in. She maintains this oddly
distanced stance, preoccupied with abstract musings such as the number of words for love in Arabic, even as events
grow menacing. The deteriorating political situation poses a particular threat to Baba, an anti­government activist who
has already served 10 years in jail, and Adel must face the wrath of his powerful father, outraged by the discovery that
he is in love with a foreign woman. Bea is wracked with guilt when she realizes that her American naivete has
contributed to the family’;s woes, but in the time­honored fashion of privileged Westerners, she
doesn’;t seem able to do more than feel bad about it. Oh­so­sensitive apercus voiced in finely wrought
language merely add to the general air of unreality in this well­intentioned but curiously unmoving novel.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Emily Robbins: A WORD FOR LOVE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466551447&it=r&asid=4495e378fc09f4114ce3af29539f9492.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466551447
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Robbins, Emily: A WORD FOR LOVE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Robbins, Emily A WORD FOR LOVE Riverhead (Adult Fiction) $27.00 1, 17 ISBN: 978­1­59463­358­4
In Robbins' debut, an American student of Arabic gets lessons in love and loss when she goes to study in the Middle
East.Bea has come to an unnamed foreign city to read an ancient text "that made everyone who read it cry, it was that
astonishing." It tells the story of a Bedouin named Qais and his doomed love for the beautiful Leila, so when she hears
a member of the family she is living with describe the blond policeman she glimpses in the station across the street
from their apartment as "a real Qais," Bea is intrigued. She has fallen in love with Arabic, we sense from allusions
skillfully planted in the early chapters, because her life in America seems too safe and devoid of deep feeling. She has
a crush on handsome Adel (the policeman) before she's even met him, but when it becomes clear that he's interested in
the family's maid, Nisrine­­who has a husband and son back home in Indonesia­­Bea passively accepts his choice. This
is characteristic of her behavior throughout the novel, as Bea describes Madame; her husband, Baba; their three
children; Nisrine; and Adel as though they were characters in an exotic play she was observing rather than participating
in. She maintains this oddly distanced stance, preoccupied with abstract musings such as the number of words for love
in Arabic, even as events grow menacing. The deteriorating political situation poses a particular threat to Baba, an antigovernment
activist who has already served 10 years in jail, and Adel must face the wrath of his powerful father,
outraged by the discovery that he is in love with a foreign woman. Bea is wracked with guilt when she realizes that her
American naivete has contributed to the family's woes, but in the time­honored fashion of privileged Westerners, she
doesn't seem able to do more than feel bad about it. Oh­so­sensitive apercus voiced in finely wrought language merely
add to the general air of unreality in this well­intentioned but curiously unmoving novel.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Robbins, Emily: A WORD FOR LOVE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329197&it=r&asid=7fd5a5a390da9322a980e1246a617da6.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466329197
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Robbins, Emily. A Word for Love
Christine DeZelar­Tiedman
Library Journal.
141.16 (Oct. 1, 2016): p74.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Robbins, Emily. A Word for Love. Riverhead. Jan. 2017.304p. ISBN 9781594633584. $27; ebk. ISBN
9780698183377. F
Bea is an American student studying Arabic in an unnamed Middle Eastern country (presumably Syria). As she faces
roadblocks in gaining university admission and access to an "astonishing text" at the national library, she becomes
immersed in the life of the family with whom she boards. The father, Baba, is secretly involved in antigovernment
activities, and the family's Indonesian maid, Nisrine, has a courtly love affair with policeman Adel. As Bea recounts
Adel and Nisrine's story, it parallels the legend of Qais and Leila, which originates with the "astonishing text." By
design, Bea's role in the story is more that of an observer than a protagonist, and through much of the novel she
remains something of a blank. The lack of specificity about the country and time frame of the setting (although we
know it's contemporary because the characters have cell phones) seems like a bit of a shortcut on the author's part,
though it helps keep the focus on the personal story. VERDICT In the end, this debut serves as a meditation on the
many meanings and forms of love, and how words and texts can be used both to love and to harm. [See Prepub Alert,
7/25/16.]­­Christine DeZelar­Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
DeZelar­Tiedman, Christine
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
DeZelar­Tiedman, Christine. "Robbins, Emily. A Word for Love." Library Journal, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 74+. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464982223&it=r&asid=4bbd7548f77f47a4a7b64d8033c011b6.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
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A Word for Love
Publishers Weekly.
263.40 (Oct. 3, 2016): p94.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
A Word for Love
Emily Robbins. Riverhead, $27 (304p) ISBN 978­1­59463­358­4
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In Robbins's debut novel, unrest grows in Syria as an American student there becomes involved in a forbidden love
triangle. Bea is as enamored of the Arabic language as she is with the idea of falling in love. Once in Syria, she is
desperate to read a near­mythic ancient love poem referred to as "The Astonishing Text," in the hopes of having a
rapturous experience reading it in its mother tongue. The content of that text­­a besotted poet longs for his estranged
beloved, while a shepherd befriends him and acts as keeper of his poems­­runs parallel to Bea's experiences, in which
she falls for a policeman who in turn falls for the maid of her host family, and she becomes the carrier of his love
letters to the maid. While the love story intensifies, so too does the situation in Syria, affecting the patriarch of Bea's
host home, who is viewed as a dissident by the government. Robbins weaves a story complete with exquisite sentences,
including descriptions of the Syrian landscape: "the winds swept up the desert in the evenings ... there were dark
smudges of smoke like birds on the horizon." Bea's fascination with language and the unique characteristics of Arabic
add delightful layers to the text. This is a rich, understated novel that offers an absorbing story full of longing, political
intrigue, and the beauty found outside the familiar. Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"A Word for Love." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 94. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166560&it=r&asid=7dae32df098f58cb1e0e36d6f5a594c9.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
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Spotlight on first novels
Booklist.
113.4 (Oct. 15, 2016): p28.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Bear and the Nightingale. By Katherine Arden. Jan. 2017.336p. Del Rey, $27 (97811018859321.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Gracefully threaded with Russian fairy tales and a tactile sense of place, Arden's debut tells the story of Vasya,
daughter of a supposed witch, in the northern reaches of medieval Russia. As a child, Vasya's conversations with wood
sprites and household spirits were an odd, but tolerable feature, but when her father marries deeply pious, troubled
Anna, Vasya learns to keep her otherworldly friends a secret. They don't stay secret for long, however: a fanatical priest
quickly catches on, and he becomes obsessed with Vasya's salvation, while Anna roils with anger over her
stepdaughters brazen disregard for propriety. Most treacherous of all, two supernatural beings, Morozko and Medved,
see powerful opportunities in Vasya's gifts. And while Vasya tries to ward off Medved's nefarious grasp on her village,
political rumblings from Moscow threaten their status quo, and the villagers become wary of Vasya's inexplicable
talents and boldness. In a lush narrative with the cadence of a fairy tale, Arden weaves an immersive, earthy story of
folk magic, faith, and hubris, peopled with vivid, dynamic characters, particularly clever, brave Vasya, who outsmarts
men and demons alike to save her family. This beautifully written, auspicious first novel is utterly bewitching.­­Sarah
Hunter
YA: With a teen heroine and fairy­tale atmosphere, this could have easily been published as YA. Teen fans of literary
fairy tales will be enchanted. SH.
Bone & Bread. By Saleema Nawaz. Nov. 2016.456p. Anansi, paper, $16.95 (9781770890091).
With an elegance and fluidity of prose rare in first novels, Canadian writer Nawaz presents a masterful examination of
the ties that bind people together and the quiet endurance required for sustaining those bonds through the countless
travails of life and death. Beena remains bereaved, but she is attempting to preserve the burgeoning relationships that
have allowed her to cope with the death of her sister, Sadhana. In the wake of this tragedy, Beena reflects on their
childhood together after the death of their parents, remembering the tumultuous nature of their sisterhood and the many
struggles that led to their final fight. Mingled grief and guilt lead Beena to return to her sister's Montreal apartment to
investigate what exactly went on during Sadhana's last days and uncover the truth behind her death. Poignant,
engrossing, and tender, Nawaz's work explores the lifelong attempt to protect those we love and how we learn to rally
for those dear to us.­­Caitlin Brown
The Butcher's Hook. By Janet Ellis. Jan. 2017. 368p. Pegasus, $24.95 (9781681773117).
In this macabre love story, Anne Jaccob is a young woman from a wealthy family in Georgian London. Though she
lives a comfortable life, she receives no love from her cold father, and her mother has been wasting away for years. Not
only that, but Anne has been promised to an oily, self­absorbed man. Longing for love and an escape from her home,
Anne is instantly smitten by the butcher's boy, Fub, when he makes a delivery to the home. She embarks on a
whirlwind love affair, which she must keep secret, and there are no lengths that she won't go to in order to protect it,
including cold­blooded murder. Still, readers won't suspect the story's dark turn, which flips the usual tropes on their
heads and makes for a pleasantly surprising read. Ellis' debut is at times awkwardly paced, and characters are generally
unlikable and melodramatic. Fans of the setting, with plenty of sex and violence thrown in, will enjoy the novelty of
this book that reads like a Tim Burton film.­­Emily Brock
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The Dispossessed. By Szilard Borbely. Nov. 2016. 304p. illus. HarperPerennial, paper, $15.99 (9780062364081).
Well­known poet Borbely uses his lyrical talent to illuminate the suffering and deep­seated poverty in a tiny Hungarian
village in the 1960s, a time when politics and communism in the region changed difficult lives to impossible. The
unnamed child narrator, whose drunken father is of Jewish descent and whose family is officially Greek Catholic
(another unpopular religion in a Calvinist village), describes his life as a fearful outcast who, with his sister, does most
of the chores and spends inordinate amounts of time keeping his mother from jumping into the well. The narrator
doesn't shy away from the peasants' coarse humor, sexual aberrations, and cruelty to animals, nor the filth and
excrement that surround them and serve as metaphors for their lives. While the short declarative sentences may seem
somewhat repetitious, every page is laden with significance, and though some readers may not enjoy the education
Borbely gives them, most will find much to ponder in this moving literary novel that compares favorably to both Elie
Wiesel's Night (1960) and Philip Hensher's Scenes from Early Life (2013) for their disturbingly clear descriptions and
autobiographical nature. Borbely died in 2014. ­­Jen Baker
Fever Dream. By Samanta Schweblin. Tr. by Megan McDowell. Jan. 2017. 192p. Riverhead, $25 (9780399184598).
Schweblin's first novel tells a frenetic, unnerving tale. A young mother, Amanda, is afflicted by a sudden illness and
accepts that death is imminent. As she waits in her hospital bed, she hears the hovering voice of a young boy, David,
who guides her as she recounts the events leading to her current dire situation. After arriving at a rural vacation home
with her daughter, Nina, Amanda strikes up a friendship with their alluring neighbor, Carla, a local who is revealed to
be David's mother. Carla shares with Amanda an unusual story about her son and her efforts to save him after he was
poisoned. Amanda, at first dubious, becomes increasingly troubled by both mother and son and makes plans to cut their
vacation short and return home. But things go awry when Amanda decides to bid Carla farewell. Schweblin's sparse
narrative, both familiar and mysterious, quickly grows in intensity as the hazy whispers of self­doubt and death itself
descend. A thought­provoking story that provides ample opportunity for readers to grapple with its unanswered
questions. ­­Leah Strauss
First Light. By Bill Rancic. Nov. 2016. 320p. Putnam, $26 (9781101982273).
Entrepreneur and reality­TV star Rancic, author of the best­selling You're Hired: How to Succeed in Business and Life
(2004), presents a captivating and harrowing debut novel. After doing damage control for a recent oil spill, the Petrol
team members are more than ready to leave the darkness of Barrow, Alaska. Kerry Egan and Daniel Albrecht are
especially excited to return to Chicago to plan their wedding and celebrate the holidays. But during their flight home,
something goes terribly wrong. Stranded in the Yukon Territory after their plane crashes during a storm, Kerry, Daniel,
and other survivors must endure the unforgiving conditions of the Canadian wilderness. Kerry and Phil Velez, another
Petrol employee, are gravely injured during the crash. As the only one with survival experience, Daniel is forced to
make difficult decisions to save the woman he loves and ensure that everyone has a chance of being rescued. First
Light is, at its core, a story of love and family, told within an engrossing page­turner about endurance and hope.­­
Patricia Smith
The Futures. By Anna Pitoniak. Jan. 2017.320p. Little, Brown/Lee Boudreaux, $26 (9780316354172); e­book, $12.99
(9780316354189).
Recent college grads Julia and Evan, who alternate chapters narrating Pitoniak's debut, have just traded New Haven for
New York. Without any distinct post­college plans, Julia thinks moving in with Evan is as good as anything else. Evan,
on the other hand, has landed a coveted spot at a highly respected hedge fund, one of the few, he'll soon learn, that's
safe in the about­to­happen 2008 market crash. Quickly, Evan is working around the clock, attracting the attention of a
boss whose elusive praise is wildly sought­after by his competitive colleagues. Julia, working "only" normal hours, is
lonely and disappointed, if not surprised, by how quickly playing house has become anything but fun. When Evan gets
involved in a deal that he suspects, then knows, isn't above­board, and Julia seeks fun and comfort elsewhere, Pitoniak
keeps the pace moving at a steady clip. Through Julia, preppy, privileged, depressive, and Evan, a Canadian country
boy running from his roots, Pitoniak's well plotted, character­driven, interior­focused novel captures the knowable
angst of the unknowable possibilities of modern young adulthood.­­Annie Bostrom
YA/M: Julia and Evan an barely older than the teenagers who might like a peek at the abruptly adult lives they lead
after college. AB.
Hindsight. By Mindy Tarquini. Nov. 2016. 320p. SparkPress, paper, $16.95 (9781943006014); e­book, $9.95
(9781943006021).
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Eugenia knows where she has been all too well; she is not sure where she is going to end up. Thirty­three years old and
living with her mother in South Philly, Eugenia has the unique ability to remember all of her past lives, but she is only
interested in what her as­yet­unknown future holds. She thinks her current life is too easy, and she is craving more,
when she meets Friedrich, a man who shares her strange talent, as his concentration­camp tattoo from a past life
proves. The two form an unlikely friendship that always dances around more, and suddenly Eugenia's life is exciting.
Instead of wishing for something better in her next life, she is engaged in the present, able to tackle things she never
thought possible and in sight of the life she has always wanted, this time around. Tarquini charms her audience with
heady wit and laugh­out­loud humor, especially where Eugenia's hilarious Italian American family is concerned. This
is a fast­reading, enjoyable journey through past and present that many readers will enjoy.­­Carissa Chesanek
* History of Wolves. By Emily Fridlund. Jan. 2017. 288p. Atlantic Monthly, $25 (97808021258731.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Fraught with foreboding, Fridlund's first novel is the story of 14­year­old Linda, who lives with her erstwhile cultmember
parents in a cabin in the northern Minnesota woods. When new neighbors, the Gardners, move into their
summer cottage across the lake, Linda becomes babysitter for their five­year­old son and an increasingly large presence
in their lives­­and they in hers. In the meantime, her new history teacher, Mr. Grierson, has been found to possess child
pornography and is fired, but not before he has an alleged affair with one of Linda's classmates, the beautiful Lily with
whom Linda is fascinated. The novel moves backward and forward in time to good effect, showing us the enigmatic
adult Linda will become. The isolated setting reinforces a theme of loneliness that pervades the book and lends it an
often bleak, even desolate, air that reinforces the uncertain, nagging knowledge that something is wrong with the
Gardners. The writing is beautiful throughout ("the sun broke over the treetops, turning every surface into a flat knife
of light"; a man is stubborn "like a stain") and is a triumph of tone and attitude. Lovers of character­driven literary
fiction will embrace this one.­­Michael Cart
YA/M: Older teens who enjoy literary fiction will he engaged and intrigued by this novel's richly realized themes of
loneliness and the urgent desire to belong. MC.
* I Liked My Life. By Abby Fabiaschi. Jan. 2017.272p. St. Martin's, $25.99 (9781250084873).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Maddy's husband, Brady, and their teenage daughter, Eve, have been struggling after Maddy's suicide. Wanting to help
her shattered family move on without her, Maddy hovers from the beyond, seeking the right woman to take her place.
She finds the perfect person to help Brady and Eve move past their loss in Rory, an elementary teacher, and she plants
thoughts in their heads to bring Rory and her family together. But Rory has experienced her own loss and may be just
as much in need of learning to live again as Brady and Eve are. Fabiaschi excels at depicting the confusion Eve and
Brady experience as they desperately try to reconcile their Maddy with the one who committed suicide. Excerpts from
Maddy's journal and multiple narrators add to the complexity of Maddy's character as well as the layers of strained
relationship history between Brady and Eve. Readers will be enveloped by the emotional impact of Fabiaschi's writing.
Warm and hopeful, this marvelous debut stands next to novels from Catherine McKenzie and Carolyn Parkhurst in
taking the reader on the emotional rides that define marriage and family.­­Tracy Babiasz
* Lincoln in the Bardo. By George Saunders. Jan. 2017.368p. Random, $28 (9780812995343).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Even though Saunders (Tenth of December, 2013), the much­heralded author of distinctively inventive short stories,
anchors his first novel to a historical moment­­the death of President Abraham Lincoln's young son, Willie, in February
1862­­this is most emphatically not a conventional work of historical fiction. The surreal action takes place in a
cemetery, and most of the expressive, hectic characters are dead, caught in the bardo, the mysterious transitional state
following death and preceding rebirth, heaven, or hell. Their vivid narration resembles a play, or a prose variation on
Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1915), as they tell their stories, which range from the gleefully ribald to
the tragic in tales embodying the dire conflicts underlying the then­raging Civil War. On pages laddered with brilliantly
"curated" quotes from books and historical documents (most actual, some concocted), Saunders cannily sets the stage
for Lincoln's true­life, late­night visits to the crypt, where he cradles his son's body­­scenes of epic sorrow turned
grotesque by the morphing spirits' frantic reactions. Saunders creates a provocative dissonance between his
exceptionally compassionate insights into the human condition and Lincoln's personal and presidential crises and this
macabre carnival of the dead, a wild and wily improvisation on the bardo that mirrors, by turns, the ambience of
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Hieronymus Bosch and Tim Burton. A boldly imagined, exquisitely sensitive, sharply funny, and utterly unnerving
historical and metaphysical drama.­­Donna Seaman
HIGH­DEMAND BACKSTORY: The buzz is loud and will continue to be so when literary star Saunders goes on a
national author tour supported by an all­platform media blitz.
* Marlena. By Julie Buntin. Apr. 2017. 288p. Holt, $26 (9781627797641).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In Buntin's vivid debut, Cath, now a New York City public librarian in her thirties, tells the story of the friendship that
changed her forever. Fifteen and stinging from her parents' recent divorce, Cath has already decided that she'll be
different in freezing, rugged Silver Lake, Michigan, from the nerdy, do­gooder "Cathy" she was back in Pontiac. On
cue, wild, beautiful, unpredictable Marlena, her new neighbor, appears as Cath, her mother, and brother pull up to the
tiny home that's apparently theirs. Cath is suddenly and completely drawn to Marlena: ethereal though chemically
fueled, brilliant but reckless, so comforting when she's not angry or, worse, too honest. An early revelation that
Marlena will soon die increases the suspense. Cath, an aggressively truant smoker in her new identity, knows that
Marlenas dad is up to no good in his rail car deep in the woods, that he's cooking a better version of the meth Marlena's
boyfriend makes and sells, and Marlena's constant pill­popping isn't nothing, but this friendship and the life that comes
with it are closer to belonging than Cath has ever felt. Though Cath tells her story in flashbacks, Buntin's prose is
emotional and immediate, and the interior lives she draws of young women and obsessive best friends are Ferranteesque.­­Annie
Bostrom
YA/M: This novel is full of first times and difficult things, and the teens who are ready for them will recognize Cath
and Marlena. AB.
Our Little Secret. By Jenna Ellis. Oct. 2016.416p. IPG/Pan Macmillan, paper, $14.95 (9781447266785).
Scanning classified ads while whiling away the minutes at her dead­end job, wrangling kids at the Manchester FunPlex
Dome, Sophie Henshaw is intrigued by a listing for an "articulate, well­mannered English girl" to work for a family in
upstate New York. At 22, her life isn't terrible, and she and her longtime boyfriend have an amazing sex life­­but not
much else. She's ready to shake things up. Quickly, after interviewing for the job on video, she's flown business class to
New York, and everything only gets more luxurious from there. Edward and Marnie Parker's seemingly endless,
hyperprivate house is teched­up and glitzed­out, and, of course, they're both interesting­­and superhot. But where are
those kids Sophie thought she was going to nanny? And is it just her, or is there a lot of sexual tension in here?
Figuring out that something's up with the Parkers, and that Sophie's hire wasn't exactly what it seemed, isn't rocket
science, but plot twists take a limo­length backseat to erotica here. And first­time novelist Ellis cleverly leaves the
ending open for a sequel.­­Annie Bostrom
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* The Patriots. By Sana Krasikov. Jan. 2017. 560p. Spiegel & Grau, $28 (9780385524414).
Krasikov's short story collection, One More Year (2008), garnered a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award and
the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Now her fluency in the complex interactions between Russia and America
shapes her first novel, an involving, suspenseful, and astute cross­cultural saga. Idealistic and impetuous Brooklynite
Florence Fein lands a job with the Soviet Trade Mission. She falls for a worldly Russian engineer, precipitating her
reckless 1934 voyage to the Soviet Union, where her naivete and brashness both endanger and empower her as she
navigates many­pronged tyranny, anti­Semitism, and vicious corruption. With scintillating language and transporting
narrative command, Krasikov interlayers Florence's harrowing adventures with those of her son, Julian­­who endured
Soviet orphanages while she suffered in a Siberian labor camp and is currently embroiled in the race to drill for Arctic
oil­­and his floundering son, Lenny. As each generation struggles to find a home and an identity in both Russia and the
U.S., Krasikov dramatizes hidden, shameful facets of history in which expat American Jews were betrayed by both
countries. In a galvanizing tale of flawed and courageous protagonists, erotic and political passion, and harrowing
struggles for survival, Krasikov masterfully and devastatingly exposes the "whole dark clockwork" of totalitarianism
and asks what it means to be a hero, a patriot, a human being.­­Donna Seaman
Pull Me Under. By Kelly Luce. Nov. 2016.272p. Farrar, $26 (9780374238582).
Luce follows her hit story collection, Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (2013), with a debut novel
about secret lives and selfhood. The daughter of a respected Japanese classical­music composer and an American
woman who committed suicide, Rio Silvestri, a nurse, now lives in Boulder with her loving husband, teenage daughter,
and a passion for long­distance running. When she receives a package containing artifacts and the news that her father
has died, Rio faces the dark past she has spent her life running from: as a teenager living in Japan, she murdered a
school bully and was sent to an institution for disturbed youth. Having hidden her shameful history from her family,
Rio now travels alone to her father's funeral in Japan to face all that she left behind. Striking an unlikely friendship
with her high­school English teacher, Rio explores ancient temples and forgotten memories on a journey to discover
courage and renewed affection for those she loves. Understated yet emotionally gripping, Luce's novel is an intimate
portrayal of one woman's search for identity.­­Jonathan Fullmer
* The Standard Grand. By Jay Baron Nicorvo. Apr. 2017.368p. St. Martin's, $26.99 (9781250108944); e­book, $12.99
(9781250108951).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Milt Wright, a widowed Vietnam vet, operates the Standard Grand, a once­thriving, luxurious Catskills resort, now a
run­down sanctuary for homeless veterans suffering from PTSD. Dying from cancer, Milt is trying to keep the Grand
afloat by maxing out his credit and finding a worthy successor. Enter Bellum Smith, gone AWOL just before her third
deployment to Iraq and running from her abusive, ne'er­do­well husband. Milt takes her in, the only female at the
Grand, and believes she may be the answer to his problems. Evangelina Canek represents a multinational corporation
with designs on the land and hopes to save her job by cheaply acquiring the property and turning a quick profit, since
the Grand is sitting on a massive shale formation. With sentences that flow like water down a mountain, Nicorvo's
muscular and energetic prose will stun readers with its poignancy, while providing a punch to the solar plexus. Whipsmart
dialogue and keen emotional insight bring a ragtag, damaged, but lovable cast of characters to life. Ultimately, it
is Nicorvo's depiction of the deep psychological scars soldiers bring home that will keep this exceptional first novel in
the hearts and minds of readers. Alongside Billy Lynn's Long, Halftime Walk (2012) and Yellow Birds (2012), The
Standard Grand is an important and deeply human contribution to the national conversation.­­Bill Kelly
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* The Strays. By Emily Bitto. Jan. 2017.256p. Twelve, $26 (9781455537723).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
A note from an old friend sparks Lily's memory, and suddenly it's the 1930s again in Melbourne. Lily is nine, first
meeting Eva, who will become her best friend. Eva's well­known artist father, Evan, is always busy painting, Lily
learns, while Eva's beautiful mother, Helena, is always busy ... being glamorous. Lily, fast becoming a witness to all
this, is fascinated by the family's bohemian existence, their house always filled with other artists, some of whom
actually live there in a kind of chaotic, de facto artist colony calling itself the Melbourne Modern Art Group. With the
adults either occupied or careless, Eva and her two sisters are left on their own­­strays, their mother calls them,
including Lily in their number, to Lily's delight. But what seems like a halcyon time changes suddenly when something
nearly unimaginable happens, and Lily is left alone and friendless. Soon thereafter the novel flashes forward some 30
years as past and present come together in a melancholy denouement. Winner of Australia's Stella Prize, Bitto's novel is
a haunting evocation of life­changing friendship. Stylishly written (an elegant woman is "pale and long and light, like a
taper"), The Strays is a marvel of setting and characterization, re­creating a time of artistic revolution and personal
revelation. Memorable and moving, this is a novel not to be missed.­­Michael Cart
The Waiting Room. By Leah Kaminsky. Nov. 2016.304p. HarperPerennial, paper, $15.99 (9780062490476).
Australian physician and writer Kaminisky's first novel centers on Dina, who finds her everyday life as a doctor in
Haifa, Israel, intertwined with both her family's past and collective Jewish history. Raised in Australia by Holocaustsurvivor
parents, she reaches Israel as an adult and experiences an immediate sense of belonging. However, even as she
meets and marries Eitan, has a child, and settles down, she feels an inner tug­of­war as she longs to return to
Melbourne, away from the relentless sense of impending disaster. Kaminsky uses the events of one day as this busy
mother and doctor runs from home to school to office and deals with errands to dramatize what it means to live under
constant threat. But she also reminds us that life is the same everywhere, even in places of high­wire stress, as we face
such realities as a strained marriage and the struggle to make time to be with one's child. Kaminsky brings Dina into
sharp focus, while her ghostly mother serves as a strong secondary character, in order to vividly personalize stark news
reports.­­Shoba Viswanathan
* A Word for Love. By Emily Robbins. Jan. 2017. 304p. Riverhead, $27 (9781594633584).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Bea has seen firsthand that real life can mirror fiction. An American student of Arabic in an unnamed Middle Eastern
country that is on the verge of revolution, Bea is on a mission to get her hands on the world­famous "astonishing text,"
a legendary story of star­crossed lovers Qais and Leila and the good Samaritan who kept their ill­fated adventures
alive. In her host family's small home, however, Bea is witness to two life­changing events that unfold along parallel
tracks: an enduring, illicit romance between Nisrine, the Indonesian housemaid, and Adel, a young policeman stationed
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next door; and the host family's patriarch's increasing involvement in political dissent, actions that might carry serious
consequences. The themes here seem ripe for melodrama, but Robbins' promising debut steers clear of cloying
sentimentality even if at times the similarities between Bea and the good Samaritan of lore feel forced. Still, Bea is a
winning choice as a narrator, lending the story vulnerability and authenticity, especially because she is such an
empathetic, and often helpless, spectator. With an impressive economy of words, Robbins, formerly a Fulbright Fellow
in Syria, tells a story that proves that themes of love, loss, and freedom truly can transcend borders and time.­­
Poornima Apte
YA/M: Intelligent and kind Bea might intrigue YAs, who will be curious to learn more about her path as a young studyabroad
student. PA.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Spotlight on first novels." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 28+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771279&it=r&asid=7db3930eadd5c8069af840369ddaacba.
Accessed 30 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468771279

"Emily Robbins: A WORD FOR LOVE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466551447&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. "Robbins, Emily: A WORD FOR LOVE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329197&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. DeZelar­Tiedman, Christine. "Robbins, Emily. A Word for Love." Library Journal, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 74+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464982223&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. "A Word for Love." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 94. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166560&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017. "Spotlight on first novels." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 28+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771279&it=r. Accessed 30 May 2017.

• Washington Independent Review of Books
  http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/a-word-for-love-a-novel
  Word count: 970

  Book Review in Fiction
  A Word for Love: A Novel
  By Emily Robbins Riverhead Books 304 pp.
  Reviewed by Bridget Connelly
  February 14, 2017
  An evocative, poetic tale of forbidden romance in the Middle East.

  Emily Robbins' A Word for Love is a beautifully crafted story of a young American's quest to master Arabic and "grow a larger heart." Her poetic style plunges the reader into the scene, her tone reminiscent of Camus in its intimate yet strangely anonymous representation of the relationship of host and guest, insider and outsider, in an unnamed country that occupies its neighbor.

  As a 20-year-old student, Bea adores the precision of the Arabic language and "the way the words leaf out like spring from three-letter roots"; how the words for world and tenderness branch out from the root word for knowledge; how the word for friendship morphs into truth; and how togetherness becomes university and Friday prayer. Her professors talk about a text that brings readers to tears. This, they say, is "the test of a language: you know it when it moves you."

  Thus, the enterprising college sophomore designs her own study-abroad program in a country which has no official exchange programs with the United States. The lure of this country for Bea is its National Library and the manuscript of the poems of Qais, the celebrated mad lover who wandered shoeless in the desert lamenting the loss of Leila, his one true love. Bea's goal is to read this "astonishing text" and be moved to tears. In preparation, she sets out to learn Arabic through total immersion and to acquire all 99 of its words for love.

  The novel's narrative opens at a point in the future when a small box with foreign postage and a police insignia arrives on Bea’s doorstep. "Bea, do you remember your Arabic?" the enclosed letter asks.

  The box contains poems written on scraps of paper, torn calling cards, and secret messages. With these as her sources, Bea writes a tale to do justice to the story of the "faraway" lovers, Adel and Nisrine, and to clear her own conscience.

  The story’s setting is a "foreign city with red skies" where people wait for rain. With the rains come the police and sandbags. Everything is guarded, watchful, enclosed. The reader is contained inside the scene, tightly held, secure.

  We meet the cast of characters returning from market the day after a rainstorm floods the streets: a family of seven packed in the car, with Baba at the wheel, Madame beside him with her son, their two daughters in the back with the Indonesian maid, Nisrine, and the American student and narrator, Bea. A barricade blocks traffic, and Madame suggests bribing a handsome young policeman, Adel, with a bag of apples to let them pass. The giggling Nisrine and Bea get out of the car to offer the fruit.

  They don’t know it yet, but they have met their fate.

  Back safe and sound in the family's fifth-floor apartment, Bea and Nisrine share beds with the daughters. It is an egalitarian Muslim household — a sweet, proper family. The American guest pays $150 a month for room and board, which offsets the $125 Madame pays Nisrine, a migrant worker, to clean and help with the children.

  Outside the home, there are mandatory government rallies, no habeas corpus, no free elections. Baba runs a family business that prints Qurans while he plots revolution with his best friend, who is the country's Nelson Mandela. They are writing a "brave document" calling for the end of censorship and for free elections.

  Adel is assigned to the roof of the police station next door. From there, he sees Nisrine on the balcony and through the bedroom windows. He falls in love. Baba says, "He is a real Qais," comparing him to the famous Uthri poet whose verses comprise the "astonishing text" that Bea so ardently seeks.

  Bea is frustrated in her desire to see the amazing document, but totally involved in her relationships inside the family circle of Madame and Baba, her growing friendship with Nisrine, and their conversations about love.

  All the doors in Madame's house lock from the outside; only the bathroom has an interior lock. Don't talk to anyone outside is Madame's rule. How is it tolerable, an American friend asks in a letter to Bea. But Bea is happy despite the obstacles and interdictions. She has her passionate quest as a lover of language, alphabets, and words.

  Suspense builds as Baba is regularly questioned by the police. Bea leaves the house only to take the children to play in the garden or to visit the library, where she is refused access to the text she seeks.

  In the garden, Bea and Adel­, the poet-policeman, talk. He teaches her the word 'ishq, which means "a poet's love," and gives her verses he has written for Nisrine. Bea becomes the go-between in a forbidden affair.

  Unintentional betrayals ensue. Bea talks too much. Baba is arrested. Bea finally beholds the "astonishing text" and cries.

  A Word for Love made this reader cry from feeling the transformative, redemptive power of fiction. This profoundly satisfying novel ventures to the very heart of romance and its literary origins in the seventh-century lyric poetry of the Arabian desert.

  Bridget Connelly studied Arabic poetry with Tawfiq Sayigh, Mounah Khouri, and James T. Monroe. She has taught courses on Arabic love poetry and the Old Provençal Troubadour tradition at Cornell and Berkeley. Her recently completed novel, Pranked, is based on a woman's romance with an Arab-migration epic.

• BookPage
  https://bookpage.com/reviews/20909-emily-robbins-word-love#.WS4kzWjys-U
  Word count: 385

  Web Exclusive – January 17, 2017

  A WORD FOR LOVE
  Love and language transcend
  BookPage review by Hannah Yancey

  In her first novel, Emily Robbins thrusts the reader into the throes of a forbidden love triangle, set amidst political unrest in the Middle East. Bea is an American student studying abroad and working as a maid for a family in a country that is never named, but strongly resembles the current state of Syria. Obsessed with the Arabic language and the idea of love, Bea’s deepest desire is to have access to a book called “The Astonishing Text.” The story inside the text bears a striking resemblance to her own, as she falls for a policeman she is not supposed to talk to, and he, in turn, falls in love with the other maid that serves her host family named Nisrine, who is an Indonesian woman with a husband and child in her home country. Despite her ties to her family abroad and knowledge of Bea’s affection for the policeman, Nisrine returns his sentiments and Bea becomes the carrier of their love poems to each other.

  As their romantic interest develops, so does the growing unrest in their country. The father of Bea’s host family participates in the revolutionary protests in the city, and turmoil surrounds him as the government seeks to expose him as a rebel.

  A Word for Love is modest and lovely; it deals with complex issues like the flaws in language and the distance between what is said and what is meant through beautiful composition and simple words. Robbins does a wonderful job of writing about the uniqueness of Arabic in a relatable way: “In Arabic, the words for freedom is hurriya. I remember first learning this word as a beginning student, and memorizing it by its nearness to the English word ‘hurray.’ The joy it brought me.” As the novel moves to its dramatic and shocking climax, every word begins to feel heavy and important, as if the reader is also holding an “astonishing text.” Robbins drives home the lesson that, despite conflict, language is transcendent.

  This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

• New York Journal of Books
  http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/word-love-novel
  Word count: 650

  A Word for Love: A Novel

  Image of A Word for Love: A Novel
  Author(s):
  Emily Robbins
  Release Date:
  January 16, 2017
  Publisher/Imprint:
  Riverhead Books
  Pages:
  304
  Buy on Amazon

  Reviewed by:
  Elayne Clift
  Emily Robbins has written a lyrical story about love in nearly all of its manifestations. A debut novel of relationships, culture, and increasing political unrest, the book clearly draws upon her own experience as a Fulbright Fellow in Syria, although she never names the country where her protagonist, Bea, is living and barely studying.

  Bea lives with a family whose “Madame” rules the roost; her kind husband Baba, a bookbinder who has paid a price for his activism; their three children; and Madame’s Indonesian maid, Nisrine. Bea, at twenty-one, is an ingénue in search of love, and a budding scholar whose main purpose in coming to this Middle East city is to read an ancient manuscript that tells a famous Arabic love story.

  She is continually thwarted in this effort and only studies twice a week with a tutor. In the course of her time with her host family, she becomes deeply attached to the gentle Nisrine, who wins the heart of a policeman, Abdel, to whom Bea is first attracted. She also falls in love with the family she lives with and the country she is living in.

  A certain lack of verisimilitude may exist for some readers. How can Bea love being locked away and restrained in her movements by the controlling Madame? How can she not die of boredom while only “studying” with a tutor twice a week? How can she be so adolescent in her quest for romance? How can she hate the idea of leaving a country visibly sliding into violence, increased oppression and war?

  But these are practical questions and this is a poetic novel. Robbins writes beautifully about love, whether it is her love for Nisrine, for Adel, for the family, for the country.

  “I saw how place didn’t matter, and at first this uplifted me. . . . I thought, Love is everywhere, it follows you, and at first this seemed a joyous thing, how we are able to love, even after the lover has left us, how memory can live on. . . . But even as I felt joy . . . I saw how painful love could be. And I saw too, how missing does not stay in one place, but spreads out like snow, how it dusts everything, and changes the landscape.”

  It is said there are 99 words for love in Arabic. Bea savors many of them, rolling them around in her mind and on her tongue like the sweet flavors of a new country. As the situation in her adopted home and country intensifies and worsens, putting Baba at risk, and as she becomes embroiled in the Middle Eastern Romeo and Juliet story of Nisrine and Adel, she is moved mightily and changed irrevocably.

  The Arabic love story Bea is kept from until the novel’s denouement is referred to as “The Astonishing Text” by those who know it. It is said to make readers weep. It is that story which serves as a framework for Bea’s reflections on love and which helps her understand that no matter what happens, love prevails, even long after the people and place that passed on that knowledge are gone.

  Elayne Clift, a writer, journalist, and adjunct professor, is Sr. Correspondent for the India-based syndicate Women’s Feature Service and a regular columnist for the Keene (NH) Sentinel and the Brattleboro (VT) Commons. Her latest book is ACHAN: A Year of Teaching in Thailand (Bangkok Books, 2007). She is currently at work on a book about doula-supported birth in the US.

• Shelf Awareness
  http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=2899#m34850
  Word count: 8

  http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/word-love-novel

• The Jordan Times
  http://www.jordantimes.com/news/features/growing-your-heart
  Word count: 916

  Growing your heart
  Feb 26,2017 - Last updated at Feb 26,2017
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  A Word for Love

  Emily Robbins

  New York: Riverhead Books, 2016

  Pp. 290

  This is the story of a great love, and of an American girl who becomes part of an Arab family, but it is quite different from most romances or cross-cultural novels, due to the author’s innovative approach to language: Emily Robbins displays an uncanny ability to expand the meaning of words beyond their dictionary definitions.

  Partly inspired by Arabic, which produces many associated words from three-letter stems, she creates a lyrical narrative that makes unusual connections between words, and to the feelings they evoke. This is not just a question of style, but thematic. Besides exploring multiple forms of love, the novel focuses on language and words, and their linkage to behaviour.

  “A Word for Love” is set in an unnamed Arab city, easily recognisable as Damascus.

  Anyone familiar with the city will find that Robbins’s descriptions ring true. Yet, it is not the famous landmarks that are highlighted. Most of the plot unfolds within the four walls of the apartment of the middle-class Syrian family with whom Bea, the narrator, lives. This is another feature of the novel’s integrated style and theme: Huge human emotions play out in a very compressed space. Love, anger, resentment, jealousy, fear and generosity are expressed in the everyday interaction involved in housework, dress, personal hygiene, meals, child’s play, whispered secrets and shared jokes. If one thinks such things are trivial, think again: Robbins shows how they are related to very basic human values and needs. This is a novel about the beauty of small things.

  There are, however, a few outings. Bea visits the National Library, for she is on a mission, having come to Syria to read “the astonishing text”, a particularly lovely rendition of the Qais and Leila love story, which is said to make even scholars cry. Bea wants not only to increase her Arabic proficiency, but to intensify her feelings. Her partner in this latter endeavour is Nisrine, the Indonesian maid of the Syrian family, who wants to “grow her heart”, so she can like her job and get over her homesickness. Making an Asian domestic worker a main character is another element that sets this book apart.

  Another outing, which turns out to be fateful, is when the family goes shopping. Just before reaching home, they face a police blockade. Madame, the mother of the family, makes Bea and Nisrine get out of the car and offer the policeman a bag of apples to speed their passage. Adel, the blonde policeman, is smitten by Nisrine, and she, in turn, spies the chance to grow her heart. As the family’s home is right across from the police station, their love blossoms in the space between.

  “There is a language that develops in love. When the circumstance is extreme… then so can be the language. Theirs was of epic proportion. They talked with their hands across the street and the garden. He stood on the rooftop, she on the balcony. Because they were far apart, it was a language of large movements”. (p. 89)

  “When she was on the balcony and he was far away, then he would raise one arm, and if she raised hers, it felt like the sky could connect them”. (p. 100)

  Looking for deeper meaning in the legendary love story of old, Bea finds herself caught up in a contemporary Qais-and-Leila romance. There are many parallels: Adel has a reputation as “a real Qais” and he writes poetry, tossing poems to Nisrine on the balcony wrapped in small plastic bags, or occasionally giving her one when she takes the family’s children to the park by the police station.

  The ultimate parallel is that theirs, too, is an impossible love, unacceptable to family and society. By paralleling the two romances, Robbins in effect creates a thematic narrative that spans over a millennium.

  Paradoxes and dualities drive the plot to an uncertain conclusion. While Bea is constrained by living in the family, it also gives her a sense of belonging. The greatest paradox, however, is the policeman’s dual role. Adel is Nisrine’s lover and is supposed to protect, but he is the adversary endangering Baba, the father of the family, who has been a political prisoner and risks being one again, as he is involved in the pro-democracy movement. It is 2005, and unrest is mounting in the country. Adding to her ruminations about language and writing, Bea learns that “here writing could be dangerous”. (p. 48)

  In this, her first novel, Robbins doesn’t romanticise love, but searches for its function in life. As Bea discovers, love is not something one finds or loses, but a component of one’s being: “In the end, it was something you went to in your most painful moments… It lifted you, helped you to become another person, to know another side of yourself”. (pp. 233-4)

  The book is also a meditation on people being trapped in pre-assigned roles, and the unforeseen consequences of trying to break out of them. “A Word for Love” will be available at Books@Cafe where Emily Robbins will have a reading in March.

  Sally Bland

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