Review: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

Home Fire presents two extreme views of Muslims: the jihadist who seeks to destroy non-Muslims and the politician who seeks to isolate himself from his Muslim roots. These are the only two types of Muslims able to ascend to power, in their own way, though their methods end up isolating the majority in the middle. Home Fire portrays the meeting of two Pakistani families that live in England, one with a jihadist father and one with a politician father. Kamila Shamsie shows readers the perspective of a handful of these family members to provide us insight into the misunderstanding between them. This is a novel that is at times slow, at times exciting, and at times heartbreaking, and the ending is sure to leave many readers divided.

One of these families is the Pasha family. Isma is the oldest sister, who is forced to take care of her two twins, Aneeka and Parvaiz (a girl and a boy) when her mother and grandmother pass away. Their father, Adil Pasha, had passed away years before, a jihadist dead en route to Guantanamo. The other family is the Lone family, with father Karamat serving as home secretary in England and his son Eamonn (a creative spelling of Aymen to appear less Arabic), who has a lot of money but zero ambition.

These two families know of each other from years past, but it is not until Isma's meeting with Eamonn in Massachusetts that events are set in motion. The early section comes from Isma's point of view, and being a dull character, her part is a slow read. There are some necessary background details in these first 50 pages, but they read like a flavorless literary novel. It's not until 70 pages in that the novel really comes to life, and that's because Aneeka radiates with energy that her sister, and the other characters, lack. Parvaiz is also crucial, showing the allure for a young Muslim man to join a radical organization - it provides for him much-needed masculinity and the promise of knowing his father, somebody his sisters and mother avoided talking about. It proves a dangerous allure, one that Parvaiz quickly regrets being seduced by. The middle sections of the book crackle with energy before slowing down for Karamat Lone, who is a sharp departure from the others in how unlikable he is.

The novel's end is abrupt and shocking. I'm still not sure what to think about it. In some regards it seems the perfect ending, but it almost feels too sudden, unsatisfactory. It lingers however, and I wonder if better knowledge of the source material, Sophocles' Antigone, would deepen my understanding of Shamsie's choices. It's not just the novel's ending that will linger with me, but the novel as a whole - it's that good.