Stealing Nasreen by Farzana Doctor
Stealing Nasreen, a first novel, tells the story of three Gujarati-Canadians: two recent immigrants, a husband and wife, who separately develop obsessions with Nasreen, a second-generation Gujarati-Canadian lesbian.
Shaffiq, an accountant in India, moved his family because anti-Muslim bias had barred him from promotion. But in Canada he is only been able to find work as a janitor in the hospital where Nasreen, a psychologist works. Bored and resentful of his menial job, he begins stealing small objects from her office. His wife Salma, who never wanted to leave India, meets Nasreen through the Gujarati classes she teaches and feels at once attracted.
This intriguing premise suffers from the fact that its central character, Nasreen, isn’t that interesting. For much of the book her main characteristics are obliviousness-to Shaffiq’s obsession, and to a secret her father is keeping-and avoidance-of her father, and of her grief in the wake of her mother’s death and the end of her long-term relationship. Nasreen is also a therapist suffering from burn-out, and I couldn’t help feeling that I had read the lesbian-therapist-distracted-by-her-own-grief plot too many times before, and seen it done better (most memorably in Carol Anshaw’s Seven Moves).
Shaffiq walks a line between sympathetic and creepy; I often felt more for his situation than for him as a character. Salma feels more like a plot point early on, but later blossoms into one of the story’s most interesting characters. Nasreen’s father is appealing, but remains on the edges of the story.
The plot is enormously predictable, though the resolution of Salma’s arc did surprise me. Doctor’s writing is flat and flabby, with a tendency to explicate what the reader has already absorbed from more subtle cues; as a result, the book, though it’s only 222 pages, feels longer than it should be. Worse, much of the dialogue-including that in the critical revelation scene at the end, in which Nasreen discovers the couple’s dual obsessions, and tries to deal with them-is painfully stilted. The book-much to the discredit of its publisher, Inanna Publications-also has an embarrassing number of typos.
Despite these flaws, the book’s short scenes and chapters read quickly, and momentum does build. Small details ring true: Salma needs a relative to explain to her that mittens are warmer than gloves, something people from cold climates take for granted. And the characters’ low-key relationships with Islam-they are all culturally Muslim, but varying degrees of irreligious-felt real and rarely represented in Western media.
For me, one of the most engaging aspects of the story was its lone fantastical element, a painting of a rani and her scantily-clad servant girl that bears a homoerotic charge. The characters in the painting are implied to be watching and commenting on the drama that transpires around them, and their presence hints at a long and unacknowledged history of same-sex desire among women indigenous to India.
The book also succeeds in avoiding the “only in the West can gay characters live happy lives” fallacy-Nasreen and her friends know of people living out gay lives in India, Salma had a serious relationship with a woman in India, and Salma suspects her brother might be gay.
Overall, I enjoyed this book the way I enjoy some mediocre lesbian films; I found it a pleasant diversion but was acutely aware that my own hunger to read about queer life and characters was a large part of why. (Doctor’s descriptions of a multiracial Toronto lesbian community rang very true to my own experiences, though the complete absence of bi and trans characters, and of bisexuality as a concept-particularly a problem with Salma’s plot-was tiresome.) These are the films I think of as “the ones I wouldn’t recommend to straight people.”
Likewise, I’d say Stealing Nasreen is worth reading if you’re looking for fiction about queer women of color, or Gujarati and/or South Asian experiences, or lesbian Muslims, or immigration in a Canadian context. I hope I’ll be able to recommend Doctor’s next novel more widely.
Shaffiq, an accountant in India, moved his family because anti-Muslim bias had barred him from promotion. But in Canada he is only been able to find work as a janitor in the hospital where Nasreen, a psychologist works. Bored and resentful of his menial job, he begins stealing small objects from her office. His wife Salma, who never wanted to leave India, meets Nasreen through the Gujarati classes she teaches and feels at once attracted.
This intriguing premise suffers from the fact that its central character, Nasreen, isn’t that interesting. For much of the book her main characteristics are obliviousness-to Shaffiq’s obsession, and to a secret her father is keeping-and avoidance-of her father, and of her grief in the wake of her mother’s death and the end of her long-term relationship. Nasreen is also a therapist suffering from burn-out, and I couldn’t help feeling that I had read the lesbian-therapist-distracted-by-her-own-grief plot too many times before, and seen it done better (most memorably in Carol Anshaw’s Seven Moves).
Shaffiq walks a line between sympathetic and creepy; I often felt more for his situation than for him as a character. Salma feels more like a plot point early on, but later blossoms into one of the story’s most interesting characters. Nasreen’s father is appealing, but remains on the edges of the story.
The plot is enormously predictable, though the resolution of Salma’s arc did surprise me. Doctor’s writing is flat and flabby, with a tendency to explicate what the reader has already absorbed from more subtle cues; as a result, the book, though it’s only 222 pages, feels longer than it should be. Worse, much of the dialogue-including that in the critical revelation scene at the end, in which Nasreen discovers the couple’s dual obsessions, and tries to deal with them-is painfully stilted. The book-much to the discredit of its publisher, Inanna Publications-also has an embarrassing number of typos.
Despite these flaws, the book’s short scenes and chapters read quickly, and momentum does build. Small details ring true: Salma needs a relative to explain to her that mittens are warmer than gloves, something people from cold climates take for granted. And the characters’ low-key relationships with Islam-they are all culturally Muslim, but varying degrees of irreligious-felt real and rarely represented in Western media.
For me, one of the most engaging aspects of the story was its lone fantastical element, a painting of a rani and her scantily-clad servant girl that bears a homoerotic charge. The characters in the painting are implied to be watching and commenting on the drama that transpires around them, and their presence hints at a long and unacknowledged history of same-sex desire among women indigenous to India.
The book also succeeds in avoiding the “only in the West can gay characters live happy lives” fallacy-Nasreen and her friends know of people living out gay lives in India, Salma had a serious relationship with a woman in India, and Salma suspects her brother might be gay.
Overall, I enjoyed this book the way I enjoy some mediocre lesbian films; I found it a pleasant diversion but was acutely aware that my own hunger to read about queer life and characters was a large part of why. (Doctor’s descriptions of a multiracial Toronto lesbian community rang very true to my own experiences, though the complete absence of bi and trans characters, and of bisexuality as a concept-particularly a problem with Salma’s plot-was tiresome.) These are the films I think of as “the ones I wouldn’t recommend to straight people.”
Likewise, I’d say Stealing Nasreen is worth reading if you’re looking for fiction about queer women of color, or Gujarati and/or South Asian experiences, or lesbian Muslims, or immigration in a Canadian context. I hope I’ll be able to recommend Doctor’s next novel more widely.