Aria

Publishers Weekly

Devastated by the accidental death of her five-year-old daughter, Aria, and still mourning for Aria's father, Justin, who died months before Aria's birth, Iranian-American Yasaman (Jasmine) Talahi embarks on a somber voyage of grief, with mixed results for Assefi's debut. From Arizona's Sonoran desert to the maize fields of Guatemala (where Aria's father had been a Peace Corps worker) to the holy places of Tibet, Jasmine, an oncologist schooled in rationality, searches for the spiritual enlightenment that might bring about her own healing. In the end, her yearlong odyssey brings her to Iran and to her parents, who reject her modern American lifestyle and with whom she has not spoken since before Aria's birth. Assefi, herself an Iranian-American physician, employs an awkward epistolary format, having Jasmine write to Aria, to Justin, to her long-dead grandmother, to friends and an ex-lover (some of whom write back). The letters are often stiffly formal, and the background information reads as forced. But Assefi's themes—loss as physical distance and the spiritual harm that can result from solitary grieving—come through. (May)

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Jenna Blum

"Ms. Assefi's Aria explores a very worst-case scenario, the loss of a child. With elegance and grace, Ms. Assefi maps her bereaved heroine's flight through numerous countries and into the uncharted territory of grief. Sometimes raw, sometimes clinically detached, Aria is always human, and in the end it soars."

Rebecca Brown

"How long does grief last? How far away can we run to try to get away from it? What happens if it stays with us forever? In this wise and compassionate debut novel, Nassim Assefi looks at questions of memory, love and grief as she takes us to Tibet, China, Guatemala, her homeland Iran and, most importantly, the human heart."

Rory Stewart

"A haunting book, painfully open in its emotions, enacting in lyrical prose, an Iranian-American's loss, atonement and reconciliation - both sentimental and estranged - with Iran and powerfully revealing of the discordancies and echoes that define the interaction between American and Persian culture."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"This rare epistolary novel starts to work undeniable magic with its immediacy and intimacy... Nassim Assefi''s Aria is a small gem of a debut novel that manages to address huge issues in an affecting manner, from the immigrant experience in America to the aftershocks of tragedy to the search for family heritage and spiritual comfort."

The Seattle Times

"Ultimately what satisfies the reader is not the description of Jasmine''s travels, but her relationships, best exemplified by Dottie''s warm presence, a supportive extended Iranian family and Alexander''s yearnings. But most of all, it is the charm, intelligence and dignity of Assefi''s writing that make this a worthwhile read."

Library Journal

For many reasons, second-generation Iranian American Assefi's novel should make for an impressive debut. About the death of a young girl and the resulting grief of her Iranian American mother, this epistolary but not always chronological novel cleverly juxtaposes events for maximum for character revelation. There is the fascinating exposition of the story of the mother, Jasmine, who grew up with strict Iranian parents but lives an American's life in Seattle as a cancer specialist and single mother. There is even a descriptive journey across the world, from Guatemala to Tibet to Iran, where Jasmine lives out her grief. Yet Ariafails in the most fundamental way—it does not sufficiently capture grief, as did Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, through which readers could feel Didion's consuming sorrow over the loss of her husband. This could be a very good novel about immigration and of the pressure of failed parental expectations, but it is too cluttered and has too many focuses to be about this sort of all-encompassing loss. Not recommended.
—Shalini Miskelly

Kirkus Reviews

After the accidental death of her five-year-old daughter, a grief-stricken oncologist embarks on a year-long round-the-world spiritual journey. Jasmine is the American-born daughter of Iranian parents who cut ties with her to protest her out-of-wedlock relationship with Justin. Justin sires Aria, then dies during the pregnancy (though he returns in a dream to christen the child?"lectur[ing] . . . [his] umbilicus" in the hyper-earnest tone that dominates the book: "When you come into this world, I want you to be like this aria we are hearing"). Aria's sudden death devastates Jasmine, who has no religious faith or rituals to rely upon, so she embarks on a trip first to Guatemala (where Justin served in the Peace Corps), then in search of spiritual succor to Tibet, and finally "home" to Iran, there to learn among her family the age-old arts of grieving. The story is told mostly in letters?first to Jasmine's three loves (grandmother, fiance, daughter), all dead now, and then, as she prepares to re-engage with the world, increasingly in exchanges with the living: her friend Dottie, anthropologist and achondroplasic dwarf; her boyfriend Alexander, whom we get to know mainly by way of Jasmine's tooth-grinding list of "forty-six reasons why I adore you"; and her mother. Assefi conveys Jasmine's desolation effectively, and the finale in Iran is somewhat affecting. But genuine emotion is undermined again and again by hokum and histrionics?the novel is as heavy-handed as it is heavy-hearted.