Title: The Last Illusion Author: Porochista Khakpour
Published: May 13, 2014
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 336
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:In an Iranian village, Zal's demented mother, horrified by the pallor of his skin and hair, is convinced she has given birth to a "white demon." She hides him in a birdcage for the next decade. Rescued by a behavioral analyst, Zal awakens in New York to the possibility of a future. A stunted and unfit adolescent, he strives to become human as he stumbles toward adulthood. As New York survives one potential disaster, Y2K, and begins hurtling toward another, 9/11, Zal finds himself in a cast of fellow outsiders. A friendship with a famous illusionist who claims—to the Bird Boy's delight—that he can fly and an affair with a disturbed artist who believes she is clairvoyant send Zal's life spiraling into chaos. Like the rest of New York, he is on a collision course with devastation.
This is the sort of book that sounds better conceptually than it works out in execution. A slightly mythical story of a boy who spent his first ten years in a birdcage and grew up to become a man just trying to be a “normal human” sound good, and that was the book I was ready to read. Yet, oddly enough, the event in Porochista Khakpour’s The Last Illusion that gives its protagonist his desired normalcy was…the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center?
Possibly, there is some great symbolic statement in all this, but I didn’t find it. For me, The Last Illusion was 100 pages of interesting set-up that gave way to 200 pages of an iffy plot slowly circling the drain as 9/11 approached. Khakpour spent so much time in the build-up—foreboding visions, etc.—that the final pages fell spectacularly flat.
Not to mention that I’m somewhat uncomfortable that the protagonist’s journey toward fulfillment and happiness culminated amidst one of the more tragic things to have happened in the United States in the 21st century. Like, here we have a nation in shock as thousands of people die, and over here we have our protagonist, Zal, grinning like a fool because he’s just realized his life’s goal.
Does this seem potentially insensitive to anyone else?
Like I said, this book has a good premise. If The Last Illusion had stuck with the boy-in-a-birdcade storyline more and had less of the “highly symbolic” and overwritten 9/11 stuff, I would have enjoyed things much more. As it is, I’m vaguely troubled by what Khakpour has done with this.
