The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

 

Summary (from the publisher): In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams for a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions of becoming “lion women.”

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

Review: Set in the 1950s in Tehran, this follows Ellie, who meets Homa as a 7-year-old. In the wake of her father's death and the fall of her family's finances, Homa and her family are a welcome refuge for Ellie. But eventually, Ellie's fortunes change and she returns to a bourgeois way of life and Ellie ultimately becomes a popular student at one of the best girls' high schools in Iran. However, after years apart, Homa suddenly reappears in Ellie's life, altering the course of both of their lives. 

This is one of those books that I have heard great things about from some many people to the extent that I worried that it would not live up to the hype. However, you were all right!!! This is a must read. 

This book is really an example of the power of historical fiction to take a dry news story and make it personal and heartrending. I have never read a book set in Iran before, and I loved getting a new perspective and insight from characters who are witnessing the collapse of their world as they know it. This is such a beautiful portrait of Iranian culture. I loved all the descriptions of food and learning about the world through Ellie's life. While Ellie is caught up in more frivolous concerns like clothing and socializing with friends, it's also beautiful to see her have the freedom to be a teenager and explore her world through her interests, even as we know the great changes that are on the horizon that she is ignorant of.  

While the book does have chapters from Homa's chapters as well, the primary perspective in this book is Ellie. I think this worked so well for me as a Western reader because like me, Ellie is naive and largely blissfully unaware of how bad things are and how much worse they will get. This is contrasted with Homa, whose family seems much more dialed into the reality of the harrowing political circumstances they find themselves in. 

This was also such a powerful depiction of friendship. Ellie and Homa know each other through decades and through great changes both personally and in their world. From an innocent childhood friendship, their connection has to expand to allow for personal differences, jealousy, betrayal but also loyalty, steadfast love, and forgiveness. Homa is frequently the wiser and more loyal of the two, but despite the wrongs committed by Ellie, I somehow never held it against her. She is young and striving and the sense of aching regret that slowly infused the novel - both for things Ellie wish she could do over and for the losses they both have endured - really moved me. I cried at the end of this book. 

This was excellent on audio, and both narrators really brought these characters to life and delivered this with such tender emotion. 

Stars: 5