Title: A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea Author: Dina Nayeri
Published: January 31, 2013
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 432
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Growing up in a small rice-farming village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister, Mahtab, are captivated by America. They keep lists of English words and collect illegal Life magazines, television shows, and rock music. So when her mother and sister disappear, leaving Saba and her father alone in Iran, Saba is certain that they have moved to America without her. But her parents have taught her that “all fate is written in the blood,” and that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. As she grows up in the warmth and community of her local village, falls in and out of love, and struggles with the limited possibilities in post-revolutionary Iran, Saba envisions that there is another way for her story to unfold. Somewhere, it must be that her sister is living the Western version of this life. And where Saba’s world has all the grit and brutality of real life under the new Islamic regime, her sister’s experience gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.
In A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, debut novelist Dina Nayeri delivers a complex and haunting story about a girl with too much imagination, and about the small village she grew up in. Nayeri’s story is masterfully crafted; this is the sort of book that one can contemplate and re-read any number of times, and as I read the final sentence, I was left with a feeling of completion and rightness.
The novel opens in 1981 on the fateful day Saba’s sister and mother disappeared at the Tehran airport. A few brief chapters discuss Saba’s girlhood in the 80’s, sneaking alcohol with her friends, hiding her non-Muslim religion, fantasizing about Tricia Nixon and Harvard-educated princes. The majority of the story, however, takes place in the 90’s, following Saba’s difficult, daydream-filled adulthood as she fumbles through life, too wrapped up in her imagination and stories about her sister’s life in the United States to devote herself to truly living.
As a character, I found Saba to be hard to engage with, but endlessly intriguing. She is a young woman very much trapped inside her own head, rehashing memories of what happened in 1981 until she doesn’t know what’s true and not true. Her life, externally, seems rather aimless, and in most ways it was. Living as a non-devout woman in post-Revolutionary Iran is hardly a fun time, and though Saba and her two best friends have fun, it’s not unrestricted fun, and it’s not freedom. Saba finds freedom in creating and telling stories of what she imagines her sister’s life in the US is like—for the most part, Saba’s existence is a vicarious one.
Set alongside Saba’s dreamy, often slow-paced narration, Nayeri inserts statements from the three village matrons who helped raise Saba. Known as the somewhat affectionately as the Three Witches by Saba, these three outside perspectives help keep the reader from falling too deeply beneath the hypnotic spell of Saba’s stories. The reader knows what is real where at times Saba does not, and that, I think, is why A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea succeeds so massively. Because Saba has no idea that she’s a bit mad, watching her go through her days is engaging and fascinating. We hope she’ll snap out of her delusions of Michael Jackson and Harvard, but it’s not a guarantee.
Added on to the many subtle and complex levels of the plot is Dina Nayeri’s unbelievably gorgeous prose. In the first 100 pages especially, I was completely blown away by how amazing her word choice, imagery, and tone was. There a definite elegance to this novel that really stood out for me.
A unique, detailed novel, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is not a light read easily cast aside. Nayeri’s storytelling has depth and creativity to it, and reading this book was at once enlightening and fatiguing. The unique portrait of Iran, as well as emphasis the bond between sisters, made this book a big hit for me.
