A Word for Love

October 3, 2016
In Robbins’s debut novel, unrest grows in Syria as an American student there becomes involved in a forbidden love
triangle. Bea is as enamored of the Arabic language as she is with the idea of falling in love. Once in Syria, she is desperate to read a near-mythic ancient love poem referred to as “The Astonishing Text,” in the hopes of having a rapturous experience reading it in its mother tongue. The content of that text—a besotted poet longs for his estranged beloved, while a shepherd befriends him and acts as keeper of his poems—runs parallel to Bea’s experiences, in which she falls for a policeman who in turn falls for the maid of her host family, and she becomes the carrier of his love letters to the maid. While the love story intensifies, so too does the situation in Syria, affecting the patriarch of Bea’s host home, who is viewed as a dissident by the government. Robbins weaves a story complete with exquisite sentences, including descriptions of the Syrian landscape: “the winds swept up the desert in the evenings... there were dark smudges of smoke like birds on the horizon.” Bea’s fascination with language and the unique characteristics of Arabic add delightful layers to the text. This is a rich, understated novel that offers an absorbing story full of longing, political intrigue, and the beauty found outside the familiar.

August 1, 2017

The arrival of an unexpected package inspires Bea to begin writing her story, "in the hope that [she] could do it justice, and clear [her] conscience." Years earlier, she traveled to an unnamed Middle Eastern country (certainly inspired by Syria, where debut author Robbins was a Fulbright Fellow) as a student of Arabic, hoping to read "the astonishing text" that contained a legendary love story. Having studied all 99 words for "love," Bea arrives more linguistically prepared than emotionally aware. Her studies pale to the drama playing out in her host family's home: the controlling Madame, her potentially dissident husband, and their daughters of varying ages. Most compelling is what happens between the Indonesian house servant and the poetic policeman. Julia Whelan's smooth, understated narration captures Robbins's observant prose with an effective distance that never allows the narrative to devolve into shrillness, even as relationships, family structures, and societal norms are threatened by growing fear and violent militancy. Bea bears witness to an uncertain future in which no version of "love" can guarantee anyone's safety. VERDICT With Syria and the Middle East regularly in the headlines, Love--in multiple formats--is a literary journey well worth exploring. ["Serves as a meditation on the many meanings and forms of love and how words and texts can be used both to love and to harm": LJ 10/1/16 review of the Riverhead hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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