Title: The Stationery Shop

Author: Marjan Kamali

Publisher: Gallery Books 2019

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 320

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Monthly Theme - October

Roya is a dreamy, idealistic teenager living in 1953 Tehran who, amidst the political upheaval of the time, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood book and stationery shop. She always feels safe in his dusty store, overflowing with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick pads of soft writing paper.

When Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—she loses her heart at once. And, as their romance blossoms, the modest little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square, but suddenly, violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she resigns herself to never seeing him again.

Until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did he leave? Where did he go? How was he able to forget her?

I really wanted to love this book and I just felt like it was good, but not great. The writing is lovely. The characters are (for the most part) lovely. But it just didn’t connect with me emotionally. I wonder after reading it if I wanted more in the past. Often with these books set in the present and the past, I end up liking one time period much more than the other. And usually that preference is for the story set in the past. I would have liked to have spent more time in 1950s Iran than the present.

Next up on the TBR pile: