“What is it like to lose everything?”
Jonas, the title character, is still Younis, a youth from an unidentified Muslim country, when this question is posed to him. And for Younis, “everything” is all encompassing: he has lost his home, his community, his family. What if you were posed that question?
None of us can answer this for another, yet human nature compels us to compare our stories to others, to dig into the loss others experience, if only to make sense of our own emotions. That cacophony of emotion is the pulse that runs through , a debut novel by Stephen Dau.
is told through memories, diary entries and traditional narrative from multiple points of view, devices that create a more powerful, compelling story than if the story was Jonas’ alone. Adding to the strength of the story is the brevity of the chapters, which initially threw me off guard, robbing me, as the reader, of the sense of knowing what should come next. Ultimately, though, this brevity symbolizes the chaos of the characters and the lives that they must recreate after their common loss, different yet the same, as in a familiar story told across time.
Understandably, loss of family is a central theme. But Dau delves deeper, examining not just the sense of loss, but how that loss translates into aloneness, as in Jonas’ case. Despite his awareness of immigrants scattered throughout Europe and the United States, he imagines them as a community of many, rather than single individuals joined together: “he feels more alone than he imagines any of these other people must feel, secure as they are in their mobile communities.” And while he eventually finds companionship, he is ultimately still alone, even in a relationship.
As this story spirals tighter and tighter, and the fabric of Jonas and the American lives he touches are woven together forever, I felt myself unwilling to finish the novel, unwilling to let go of the characters.
Maybe Dau meant to instill a sense of loss in all of us, his readers, with a story that stays with you long after the book has been returned to the shelf.
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Disclaimer: I was compensated for my review by BlogHer, but the opinions expressed in this review are my own.
Thanks for a great review! I love finding new books to add to my reading list.
This sounds like a really interesting book, and your review is terrific. I will put this on my list of “must read” books.