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We dive into the life of Scottish born and raised Margaret as she lives with her Afghan second husband Iqbal, a doctor, and two young children in Afghanistan.
The story jumps back and forth between the present and the past in which she met and fell in love with her first husband. Margaret has changed her name to Miriam and gradually throughout the story we discover her history as well as those of her two husbands.
This is a beautifully told story that will remain in your thoughts after you’ve finished reading. There’s conflict both on the social landscape level as well as the personal. There’s doubt and mistrust because of the conflicting cultural issues, but there’s also love, kindness and inclusiveness shown to Miriam. She becomes immersed in the life of Iqbal’s village partly because she’s a midwife and sets up a clinic for the village women.
The story is rich in imagery. Horrible things happen in Afghanistan, as they do everywhere else of course, but the miseries caused by families compelled to ‘save face’ are difficult if not impossible to understand by anyone not raised in such a culture.
I found myself musing that the author must have firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan and life there. There’s just too much detail, in my opinion, for it not to be from personal experience. I was curious enough to check out her website and discovered she had spent ten years in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a health worker.
I spent two very pleasant afternoons reading this book and would have been happy to keep reading if it had been longer.
No more mulberries on Amazon US | Amazon UK
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Many thanks for this lovely review, Alana. I love it when readers ‘get’ my book and what it’s about. It’s funny you saying you would have kept reading if it had been longer. It was longer but one of those industry ‘experts’ told me I needed to cut it because a first novel should be only X number of words (can’t remember exactly now) so I chopped it down to size. A number of readers have asked me what happens next so one day, I hope, there will be another book.
Thanks again, I’m so pleased you enjoyed No More Mulberries.
Hi Mary, thanks for the lovely comment. What a pity you were told to cut the novel. I would have loved more of it. And, again, rest assured you didn’t make any typing mistakes in your comment. For a reason I can’t figure out words are being abbreviated when the comment is published.