Review by Sohana Hasan -- Remembering Hope

[Sohana Hasan]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Remembering Hope" by Parastoo Rezai.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Parastoo Rezai’s Remembering Hope begins with our female lead, Bahar Salehi, in a hospital room. Her husband, Omid, is suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer called glioblastoma and is back in the hospital after a bad fall. They’ve been married for twenty years, have two kids and—for all intents and purposes—have been living the perfect life before Omid’s cancer. The couple still have a sizzling love life, rarely fight and (as far as Bahar knows) they’re doing well financially. However, although Omid was diagnosed with cancer two years before the book begins, they’ve yet to tell their two kids. When Bahar does, the children’s heartbroken reactions are the first in a series of terrible things that happen in their family. Throughout it all, Bahar must keep their family afloat and make painful sacrifices to hold her home together.

I wasn’t very emotionally invested in this book until about halfway through. That’s when Rezai makes a real connection between her characters and the audience she’s writing for. The protagonist, Bahar, and her struggles quickly became my own, and I couldn’t stop reading, until I saw them resolved. I also enjoyed the book’s uncertain ending. It doesn’t end perfectly, and instead wraps up realistically. Even at the resolution, there is still uncertainty and that always makes more sense than a perfect ending. Overall, the plot is intriguing, and I didn't find it boring or slow.

Although I did enjoy Remembering Hope, there were a few negative aspects that caught my attention. One thing I didn’t enjoy was the writing style. At times, there were long dialogues from the same person that would go on for half of a page, sometimes more. It dragged on and most of what the character would say, could’ve been written within a sentence or two. Additionally, the author chose to switch back and forth between when Bahar and Omid first met, to the present. Although initially interesting, this became confusing because Rezai would not always indicate that she was switching; she would just do it without warning, and it left me disoriented.

The beginning of Bahar and Omid’s relationship also seemed unrealistically portrayed. They both reluctantly meet each other, fall in love, and get engaged within ten days? Even if it’s acknowledged that this is fast, it still doesn't make much sense. Ten days is not long enough to know the negative aspects of a person’s character: it’s only enough for the positive. This paired with the fact that they rarely fight, never have issues and are blissfully married for decades, is impractical.

This is a smaller issue, but it bothered me a lot. The writing would be going fine, the conversations would be flowing really well and—all of a sudden—a few characters would start talking really formally. They’d stop using contraction and speak very rigidly. This didn’t make sense to me at all and took away from how much I enjoyed the book overall. I was a bit torn between 3 or 4 stars for this book’s rating, but due to the issues that I’ve brought up and a few others, I ultimately decided that this book deserved a rating of 3 out of 4 stars.

I would say that the reading level would be at around 15 years old and on. It has a hopeful message that teenagers may benefit from reading. However, its lesson of faith and resilience is one that everyone can benefit from, so Remembering Hope is a book that I would recommend to all ages.

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Remembering Hope
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[maggi3]

Even with the negative aspects, this sounds like a beautiful read. Finding and remembering hope in the face of tragedy is a hard task, but it is essential that we learn to do so, so I love that resilience is a theme of the book. Thanks for the review!

[Sohana Hasan]

Even with the negative aspects, this sounds like a beautiful read. Finding and remembering hope in the face of tragedy is a hard task, but it is essential that we learn to do so, so I love that resilience is a theme of the book. Thanks for the review!

Thanks for your reply! This really was a great read, and I did enjoy it overall. Finding and remembering to hope for the best is no easy task, especially when met with so much adversity. Resilience is definitely a theme here and it's certainly an important one!