Underground Fugue

March 13, 2017
In music, a fugue is a composition where two or more voices hand off a theme to each other, enriching it in their interplay; in psychology, a fugue is a dissociative state, a forgetting and flight from the self. Singer’s novel utilizes both meanings for an unusually layered debut. In short, taut chapters, the novel alternates between two families who have suddenly become neighbors. Esther’s surface reason for coming to London from New York in 2005 is to take care of her mother, Lonia, who’s dying of cancer. But it becomes clear as the story progresses that she is in flight from the emotional pain following her son Noah’s drowning, and from the dissolution of her marriage. Her neighbor Javad Asghari is an Iranian-born doctor researching the true case of the “Piano Man,” an unidentified person who can’t or won’t speak and has become a tabloid sensation. Javad too has a failed marriage. His 19-year-old son, Amir (who is about the same age Noah would have been), has a penchant for exploring London’s underground, a fact that will become significant as the plot approaches the July 2005 bombings. Interspersed are Lonia’s memories of fleeing Poland in 1939. Occasionally the novel stumbles as the characters intertwine in predictably romantic ways, or when the themes of loss and longing are sounded for a bit too long. However, when terror strikes, the plot accelerates and the novel’s strands converge brilliantly. Singer’s debut novel satisfyingly fulfills a good novel’s aim: to shed light on “the secret interiors of other people’s lives.”

February 1, 2017
In the months before the July 7 London bombings in 2005, a woman confronts the death of her son, the impending death of her mother, and her own various prejudices.When she arrives in London to care for her dying mother, Esther's life is in shambles. She has left her husband and her job as a museum conservationist; she's also grieving the death of her son in a swimming accident almost three years earlier. Esther doesn't know quite what to make of her life now. In London, she meets Javad, her mother's next-door neighbor, an Iranian transplant to England as well as a neuroscientist. Javad lives with his 19-year-old son, Amir, whom Esther is vaguely suspicious of. Singer's (The Pale of Settlement, 2007) first novel begins in the months before the July 7 terrorist attacks in London, and it is suffused with the paranoia that overtook much of the non-Muslim Western world after 9/11. Esther, who soon begins seeing Javad, suspects Amir of something she can't quite name; in fact, the first time she lays eyes on him, at 3 a.m. on his own front stoop, she assumes he's trying to break in. Singer is a capable storyteller, but these suspicions of Esther's are hard to sympathize with. Actually, they're a bit too reminiscent of a certain episode of 30 Rock in which Liz Lemon reports her innocent Middle Eastern neighbors to the authorities--except that Singer lacks Tina Fey's wry, self-eviscerating humor. When July 7 finally arrives, Esther's and her mother's fates are meant to implode with Javad's and Amir's, but the various storylines ultimately fail to come together. Singer's plot is too heavily schematic, her prose too effortful, for the novel to breathe on its own. This ambitious first novel never comes fully to life.

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March 15, 2017

Esther has fled New York for London, ostensibly to care for her dying mother, Lonia, but more accurately to avoid her crumbling marriage and the giant hole created when her son died. Smoking a cigarette outside her mother's flat one evening, she glimpses a young man in a dark hoodie and boots, acting furtively near the neighbor's door. Immediately alarmed, Esther later chides herself when she discovers it's the neighbor's teenage son, Amir, returning home after a late night out. Over time, Esther gets to know Amir's father, Javad, a medical researcher originally from Iran. His gentleness and honesty about his struggles raising a sullen and moody youth gives Esther momentary hope that perhaps she could one day rebuild her life. Then terrorists bomb several tube stations, Amir disappears, and Esther has to make a call that changes their lives. Lonia's story, as a young Jewish woman fleeing Poland during World War II, contrasts with the experiences of Javad and Amir as Muslims in London in 2005. VERDICT Award-winning short story writer Singer (The Pale Settlement) gracefully weaves the fugue motif throughout her debut novel without being heavy-handed. The result is a nuanced, realistic exploration of themes of loss and identity, which seem particularly relevant in these uncertain times.--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA

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