A Map of Home

by Randa Jarrar

[nannah]

I had no idea what to expect when I picked this out from the library. It was simply something on my list, and something on my 2018 reading challenge. But it literally ended up changing my outlook on a lot of things, and though sometimes it was difficult to read based on traumatic events in my own childhood (why don't books have content warnings the way movies & video games do?), it left me feeling contented and warm-bellied the way eating a comfort meal does.

Book content warnings:
rape
domestic & child abuse

A Map of Home is the story of Nidali, daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father and the life she had growing up in Kuwait, Egypt, and then finally the US (in Texas, of all places). It's, as the goodreads summary says, "a loving portrait of [her] eccentric middle-class family", and eccentric at times seems like an understatement.

But "loving portrait" ... it hardly gets more spot-on than that. The book is touching, heart-breaking, and even funny, too, and sometimes simultaneously.

I don't have much else to say, because it's just written very well; I can't believe this is a debut. I learned a lot from this book, too, but that's a bit personal, and I don't want to go 1). "NSFW", and 2). into personal things from my childhood that doesn't matter to anyone reading this. But Randa Jarrar definitely has a talent for describing personal things in a way other people haven't before -- I've never connected to characters and experiences before like I have here.

Even saying all this, I've still given this book four stars instead of five just because of personal taste, and for the fact that I'm not sure I'd like to read this again, if that makes sense.