In the Language of Miracles

June 8, 2015
A family reckons with tragedy amid a storm of suspicion in Egyptian author Hassib’s debut novel. Set in the early aughts, the story centers on the Al-Menshawys, an Egyptian family living in suburban New Jersey whose lives were irrevocably changed when Hosaam, the family’s despair-ridden eldest son, killed himself and his ex-girlfriend, Natalie, the daughter of the Bradstreet family, who lives next door to the Al-Menshawys and were once their good friends. As the anniversary of the tragedy approaches, as well as a memorial organized by the Bradstreets, memories of the incident affect each of the Al-Menshawys differently. Patriarch Samir wants things to return to normal, while Nagla, his wife, descends into a spiral of self-blame. Khaled, their teenage son, distracts himself with the migration patterns of monarch butterflies, which he sees a metaphor for his own parents’ flight from Egypt to the U.S., and “the fascinating possibility of finding the way back to a home that one has never known,” while his younger sister, Fatima, turns toward traditional Muslim customs. The reader may wish Hassib had introduced more conflict and complexity into the plot, but the novel offers fascinating insight into the lives of American Muslims, and the prejudice with which they contended in the years after 9/11. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
Hassib's sensitive, finely wrought debut probes the fault lines revealed in an Egyptian-American family after their eldest son kills his ex-girlfriend and himself. Because the Al-Menshawys are Muslim immigrants to a small New Jersey town, they not only endure jaundiced scrutiny about where they went wrong with Hosaam, but ugly Internet shaming and whispers conflating a troubled teen's actions with international terrorism. Hassib's treatment of thoughtless prejudice is quietly scathing, but her real interest is how family members react to it. Mother Nagla is paralyzed by grief and guilt; almost a year after the murder-suicide, she is still relying on her mother, Ehsan, to run the house while she broods in her dead son's attic room. She's appalled when her husband, Samir, a local doctor, decides that a memorial service for the girl Hosaam killed, daughter of their next-door neighbors, provides the perfect opportunity to rejoin the community. The novel takes place over the five days leading up to the service, but the characters' memories range from the family's arrival in 1985 through the fissures created by Hosaam's act. Daughter Fatima is becoming more pious, which strikes her brother Khaled as providing one more reason for people to ostracize them. He feels his brother's crime is still controlling the whole family's behavior and thrashes around for ways to break free. Without minimizing the older generation's faults-Samir is overbearing, Nagla passive-aggressive, Ehsan interfering and manipulative-Hassib makes palpable the bonds of love and loyalty that bind them and the children together in a situation that would test any family to its limits. The climax at the memorial service is as wrenching, awkward, and inconclusive as it would be in real life; an epilogue affirms that people survive even the most horrific traumas. Steeped in Arabic culture and the Muslim faith, as well as sharply observant of immigrants' intricate relationships to their adopted homelands, this exciting novel announces the arrival of a psychologically and socially astute new writer.

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August 1, 2015
In the suburban New Jersey town in which Hassib's admirable debut is set, it has been nearly one year since a tragic murder-suicide shocked residents. For the Al-Menshawy family, whose eldest son was the perpetrator of that crime, the week leading up to the anniversary is one of concentrated shame and conflict punctuating months of the same. The patriarch, Samir, has refused in the past year to leave the town and his medical practice, despite increased prejudice against his Muslim, Egyptian-born family, whose suffering he ignores. During this week he is equally stubborn in his conviction that attending a memorial service for the young victimhis son's ex-girlfriend and their next-door neighborwill help mend wounds. The strain on his family, particularly wife Nagla and son Khaled, comes to a head as the days preceding the memorial are chronicled from multiple points of view. Hassib does fine work portraying a family divided by culturally and generationally divergent reactions to a harrowing situation, and the novel builds to a gratifying crescendo as the memorial nears and tensions rise.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)