Canada Reads 2016 First Read: Bone and Bread

I love the CBC!!!

I have begun my Canada Reads 2016 homework, and my first novel is Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz

Here is an excerpt from Heather Leighton's Globe and Mail review: 

In Bone & Bread, Beena and her younger sister, Sadhana, live in a tiny apartment above a bagel store in Montreal’s Mile End. Their father, Vishram Singh, the bagel-shop owner, dies suddenly, leaving the business to his younger and more traditional Sikh brother, Harinder. The Singh family in India had disowned their eldest son because of his marriage to a white American woman, Beena and Sadhana’s mother, in spite of her conversion to Sikhism.

After the father’s death, their apartment is set ablaze by neo-Nazis, and Sadhana soon shows signs of obsessive compulsive disorder. Tragedy strikes again when the mother dies, leaving the two young teens in the care of Harinder, the girls’ only living relative in Canada. Within a year, Sadhana is admitted to hospital for anorexia, while Beena finds herself pregnant. The child’s father, Ravi, a bagel-shop employee, is nowhere to be found.

Beena tells their story from the present as an adult living in Ottawa with her now 18-year-old son, Quinn. Sadhana, the actress, dancer and political activist, has died, and Beena must return to Montreal and empty her apartment. In the process, she uncovers evidence that raises suspicions about the circumstances surrounding her sister’s death. She also discovers that Sadhana had secretly contacted Ravi, now a rising right-wing political star.

I had difficulty with this novel. Bone and Break is suffused with strife and misery, cruelty, grief and despair--not a light read. Nawaz’s narrator, Beena, is plagued with tragedy: her ungrateful, anoretic sister Sadhana is emotionally manipulative, her father and mother pass away leaving them orphaned, and their only relative--their uncle-- is repressive and unable to love them.

The writing is a challenge too. The story skips in and out of the first person singular into plural. Stylistically, I believe that this is a problem. Although there were moments of beautiful prose, there were moments that I found myself confused by Nawaz's writing.  

Farah Mohamed will be defending Bone and Bread. She is a very interesting women in her own right. Here's a link for more info on her unique perspective on life: http://www.cbc.ca/books/2016/01/farah-mohamed.html

Farah Mohamed will be defending
this novel

I don't believe that this novel truly hits the theme of "Starting Over" for CBC's competition. Without question, this novel has many losses, and forces it's characters to adapt to change and challenge, but it's not inspirational or overly memorable.

I suspect that this isn't this year's winner. We will see if others across Canada agree. 

Here's another blog that I enjoyed reading about this novel:

http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2016/01/review-of-bone-and-bread-by-saleema.html