The Blood of Flowers By Anita Amirrezvani

Anita Amirrezvani was born in Teheran, Iran in 1961 and raised in San Francisco by her mother, after her parents separated when she was two years old. She began going back to Teheran at the age of 13, several times afterwards, to spend time with her father and her Iranian family. During the nine years spent writing her first novel, The Blood of Flowers, she visited Isfahan three times to study the settings described in her novel on location.

She read many books about 17th century Iran under the reign of Shah Abbas and also spent time informing herself about art during this period; like paintings, architecture, textiles and the art and techniques of carpet making.

Amirrezvani worked as an art journalist and a dance critic in San Francisco for ten years.

The Blood of Flowers was published in 2007. It was short-listed for the 2008 Boeke Prize and long-listed for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction.

The Blood of Flowers, set in 1620 Isfahan, is a tale of endurance that led to success. Each detail in the novel is meticulously described. The colours are vivid, the flavours are mouth-watering and the fragrances are powerful as much as the emotions.

In order to enhance her fairy tale, the author has chosen an exotic background for her story about the craftsmanship of carpet making, promoted by Shah Abbas the Great, as a fine art. Like Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, it's a detailed description about how miniature drawing in the late sixteen century Turkey under the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III was also a very refined art.

Amirrezvani and Pamuk have both chosen the colour "red" to describe on one side, the colour used by the artists to enhance their work - the blood of flowers - that is used for dying the wool, and on the other side to describe the colour of blood. In Amirrezvani's case it refers to the precious virginity while in Pamuk's case it refers to the human incessant bloodshed.

Amirrezvani reveals in her novel that she is clearly influenced by folk tales, an old Iranian tradition. The seven tales woven into the main story, is a homage to the traditional folk storytellers throughout the ages. Another tribute in the novel is given to the anonymous carpet artisans, who will always remain unknown and whose beautiful work has survived many centuries and who are portrayed by the unnamed narrator.

The story is about a painful striving of an innocent immature, ambitious, strong-headed young girl through her journey to the harsh world of adulthood and through her many attempts and her final victory. She is faced with a dilemma; either to forsake her dignity and lead a degrading life of servitude, under her weak-willed uncle's and his wicked authoritarian wife's roof, or take the big risk of fighting for a better independent tomorrow, for herself and her mother.

The narrator discovers that a very thin thread exists between the strong will, love and happiness. She is portrayed as an early determined, strong-headed feminist, quite precocious for her time, despite the male dominated society she lives in.

With time and experience the narrator begins to understand her own worth and refuses to live with her "temporary husband" Fereydoon. It's an unsettled life where she has to keep his interest by being constantly inventive during their night frolics in order for him to keep renewing their marriage contract - called the "Sigheh" - every three months. The explicit sex passages described in detail by the author are unnecessary to the plot.

Instead of being like the submissive Sheherazad in the tale of One Thousand and One Nights and her endeavour to keep the king's keen interest in her tales in order to escape her death sentence, the narrator chooses instead to face poverty and starvation, in the hope of reaching her target by becoming one of the finest carpet makers of her time.

The description of the beautiful, painstakingly crafted carpets produced by the narrator and her women artisans, contrasts with their own abject poverty and suffering.

A good and rich insight of the old Iranian history and culture. Skillfully written with many themes that are still valid in today's world.

Upcoming Books For UNWG Book Club

Dear Ladies,

Here are the next two books we will be discussing:

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani
on Friday, 27 March 2009.

So Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor
on Friday, 24 April 2009.

Thanks,
Chouhrette

Mothers and Sons By Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in the South East of Ireland in 1955. His father who was a school teacher and a local historian, died when Toibin was twelve years old.

Colm Toibin is the second youngest of five children. He went to St Peter's college in Wexford and later studied English and History at University College in Dublin. After graduating he left Ireland and taught English for four years in the Dublin School of English in Barcelona (Spain).

He went back to Ireland in 1979 and worked as a journalist at In Dublin, then at Magill magazine followed by the Sunday Independent in Dublin, was a contributor to Esquire, the London Review of Books, New Statsmen, The Times Literary Supplement and the Irish Review.

He has been visiting professor at Stanford University and The University of Texas in Austin. He also lectured at other universities, including Boston College and New York University. Colm Toibin lives and works in Dublin. He is one Ireland's leading contemporary writers.

Toibin won several awards. He is the author of number of fiction and non-fiction works.
Fiction:
The South, 1990
The Heather Blazing, 1992
The Story of The Night, 1996
The Blackwater Lightship, 1999
The Master, 2004
Mothers and Sons, 2006.

He has also written ten non-fiction books and a play staged in Dublin in 2004 called: Beauty in a Broken Place.

Mothers and Sons is Toibin's first collection of short stories. Three long stories and six short ones of which, eight stories are set in contemporary Ireland and the last one in a village in the Pyrenees in provincial Spain.

In his book the author describes the relationships forged between mothers and sons in their adulthood; the very fine unseen tie woven between them,their lack of communication and understanding with what it entails of heartbreak and sadness, despair, loneliness and sometime guilt. The author also tackles the problem of how to deal with one's losses of a dear one.

Toibin succeeds in conveying with great sensitivity and melancholy, the psychology that shapes, each time differently, mother to son or son to mother. Whether the son is a professional thief, or faced with his estranged mother, or a paedophile priest, or sad over his mother's death, or suffering from depression, or looking for her under the snow.

The nine stories, despite the book title which infers love and warmth, are all gloomy, unhappy and devoid of the cosy feeling that could be expected between mothers and sons. Instead there is the deep pain inflicted by sons on their mothers and the consequences of mothers' behaviour on their sons, which combined with the harsh reality of life that each side is faced with, helps to create an isolation between the two sides.

Toibin's choice of short stories, lack of landscape description, or any usage of flowery prose for this delicate subject is deliberate and most suitable. His way to make the readers feel the pain of the character, by keeping the intensity of the feeling which could have been easily lost in a long story.

Toibin's description of endurance, separation and longing with such depth, shows a keen understanding of the complex human psychology and its frailty, which is movingly haunting and thought provoking.

The author didn't impose himself as a moralist, in fact the reader is not sure who is the unscrupulous and who is the sympathetic character because of the palpable but unspoken emotions. All the stories are left without a classical ending intentionally. Toibin wanted to withhold the conclusion in order to confront his readers with a conflict,dramatise it and leave it at that.

Mothers and Sons is melancholic like all other Toibin's novels. The answer of the author to that, is in one of his interviews, he says : "When I started out writing I would have considered myself to be quite happy. I'm not a sad boy, but the books are full of terrible melancholy. I've learned about it from writing the books. If I had known all this about myself before I started, I probably would have gone into serious therapy instead of writing."

Toibin's style of writing is pure and neat without being cold. Mothers and Sons continues to collect international acclaim.