Lifted by the Great Nothing

March 30, 2015
Dimechkie’s debut is a coming-of-age tale loaded with themes and ideas. Max lives in New Jersey with his father, Rasheed, a Lebanese transplant whose mantra is “When we are in America, we are Americans.” Max knows little of his mother, who died when he was very young. Rasheed is a mostly solitary person—despite a brief and disastrous affair with a much younger woman named Kelly, who encourages Max to press his father for details about Max’s mother. Years later, Kelly writes a letter explaining the ways that Rasheed lied to him, at which point Max is already mostly estranged from his father, because of Rasheed’s racism in the face of Max’s friendship with a much older African-American neighbor. Frustrated and confused, Max leaves for Beirut to ferret out the truth about his family. Dimechkie writes without restraint, and the book covers homosexuality, racism, identity politics, and immigration. Eventually, Dimechkie’s wealth of themes gets away from him, and he is unable to give his ideas the nuance they deserve. The book is a well-written, engaging story, a bit too overloaded but nevertheless showing a writer with true potential.

March 15, 2015
Twelve-year-old Max's father, Rasheed, is determined to give Max everything he longed for throughout his own childhood in Lebanon, but he can't prevent their growing alienation as Max becomes a teenager and seeks out his Lebanese heritage. Growing up in New Jersey, Max has never heard his father talk about "old Lebanese friends or family or religion or politics." Rasheed's friends are Tim, Max's basketball coach, and their neighbor Mr. Yang, a fellow immigrant. For Rasheed, spending time with Mr. Yang is a respite from his "foreignness in other social environments." But after Max chokes on a glob of candy at a party and nearly dies-saved only by a deft use of the Heimlich maneuver-the shock finally prompts Rasheed to talk about Max's mother and their extended family, who were all murdered in Lebanon. What Max needs, Rasheed realizes, is a mother. He immediately finds a 22-year-old co-worker named Kelly to become his girlfriend and moves her into their home. Kelly, however, is more interested in Max than in his father-cuddly and affectionate, she slips into bed with Max at night and shows him how to masturbate. When Kelly runs off with their neighbor Nadine's boyfriend, Max, now in eighth grade, seeks comfort in Nadine, driving a wedge between himself and his father. This rift is cemented when, in an overused deus ex machina, Max finds out that his mother is still alive and heads to Beirut to find her. Despite the tired plot device, this promising debut offers a finely nuanced look at race, gender, and power in American society. Dimechkie is at his best when allowing his great development of character, rather than forced plot points, to propel the narrative. A promising debut penned in vivid, suspenseful prose that gives a new spin to the classic tale of fathers and sons.

March 1, 2015
Sixteen-year-old Max's Lebanese American father, Rasheed, wants to forget where he came from. When we are in America, we are Americans, he declares, refusing to talk about his earlier life in the Middle East; he will only say that Max's mother and his entire family were murdered by a robber. But were they? To find out, Maxwithout telling his fatherflies off to Lebanon where he discovers his father has been lying to him since he was a child; the newly discovered truthand a momentary act of violencewill change his life. Dimechkie's character-driven coming-of-age novel is less about the immigrant experience than about a literal and figurative journey of self-discovery. It is also a love story between father and son, yes, but also between Max and the older woman doctor who lives across the street. And in a novel featuring Lebanon, it is no surprise that politics and social justice also play a part. All of these disparate elements come together seamlessly as Max struggles to deal with the new realities of his life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)