How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi — book review

DISCLAIMER: having just come across a 5-star review that says negative reviews should not remark on how this book doesn’t really explore Amir’s faith and/or heritage I felt the need to better articulate my thoughts about this book:
1) I’m not saying this book doesn’t have great Muslim rep because I found it unbelievable that a Muslim mc wouldn’t be thinking about his faith/heritage 24/7 or because the mc is a non-practicing Muslim
2) I do think that this book could have delved deeper into Amir’s relationship to his faith/heritage. Throughout the course of this novel Amir states that being gay is incompatible with being Muslim…and that’s it. He merely reiterates ‘Muslims don’t like gay people’…that strikes me (I am being entirely subjective) as somewhat simplistic.
3) the novel opens with his family being detained at an airport. The author states that he wanted to ‘subvert’ this type of situation but I am not sure he succeeded. Scenes from this ‘interrogation’ are interspersed throughout the novel, and it felt extremely gimmicky and insensitive (treating a serious situation in a very superficial and unconvincing way).
4) I’m not a Muslim so I recommend you read reviews from Muslim users. If you are thinking of reading this book I suggest you check out more positive reviews.

What I can comment on however is Ahmadi’s depiction of Italy and Italians (yes, I’m Italian)…which truly irritated me.
Maybe non-Italian readers will be able to overlook the stereotypes in this novel…personally I’m tired of books that portray Italy as a quirky land of Vespas and pasta. Fun fact: Italians don’t just eat pizza and pasta (I know, mind-blowing). Also, why do we always get this quaint image of Italian women hanging their laundry?
The Italian characters left much to be desired. There is this Italian couple (the only two Italian guys who actually make more than two or three appearances), possibly in their late twenties, and they are not monogamous. Cool for them, right? Except that they are actually deeply unhappy and they (view spoiler) Then we have a cute Italian guy from Puglia who plays a rather irrelevant role (I guess he’s there so we can have a kiss scene in the Sistine Chapel?).
Another Italian character is a guy who works at a bar/restaurant and speaks in a “It’s-a Me, Mario” accent (his supposed all-caps texts to his daughter? Ridiculous).

The story is very rushed. Amir is blackmailed, skips his graduation day, and flies to Rome. Here he manages to get an apartment, even if he’s never been to Rome before nor does he speak Italian. Lucky for him he comes across a group of ‘friends’: some are American, some Italian, most are gay. They invite him out, make him feel more comfortable with his sexuality. He manages to make some ‘illegal’ money by writing Wiki articles, he avoids his parents’ phone calls, and he tries not think about returning to America. Although he’s eighteen, he acts like a young teen, which made some of his encounters with his new ‘friends’ a bit problematic. More disappointing still is the fact that none of these gay couples are actually happy (as most of them seem to resent their partner and/or their friends). What kind of message are the readers supposed to get? Amir has ‘fun’ sort of. He drinks out and goes to parties. But then we ‘realise’ that they are either cruel, uncaring, unforgiving, and/or liars. While a certain positive review calls my review out on this, saying that characters should be allowed to be imperfect, I think they missed the point I was trying to make. I’m all for flawed characters but they have to be somewhat realistic. The characters here don’t ‘change’ or ‘learn’ from their mistakes. They are and remain one-dimensional (we have the closeted jock, the smart younger sister, the ‘motherly’ mother, the distant father).
I had the impression that Ahmadi skipped a lot of scenes, so that we had these jumpy transitions in which ‘time passed’ and ‘stuff happened’. The ending felt anticlimactic, angsty for the sake of being angsty (of course we have to have a big fight between our ‘friends’). The interrogation scene predictably amounted to nothing.
The writing, the characterisation, the way Italy is portrayed, all leave a lot to be desired (once again: this is my personal opinion).

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

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