Coming of age story about a Pakistani American boy. I was interested enough to read to the end to find out how things were resolved but it was hard to love a book when I didn't really like any of the characters. ( )

This book grabbed me right from the start and held me to the end. It was well written, believable and dealt with some timely subject matter, Highly recommended. ( )

I’m a terrible storyteller which really stinks because I love great stores. “American Dervish” is a wonderful story of the coming of age of a Pakistani-American in the 1980s that resonated with me on many levels. I loved being able to walk a mile, or 340 pages in this case, in someone else’s shoes, to understand how life was for someone who in many ways is totally different from me but who, in the end, I have so much in common with. “With everything in life, Hayat, it’s the intention that matters.” This line, spoken lovingly by Mina to Hayat, the young protagonist of the book speaks to me. Strangely, it also ties in with a theme in the last book I read before this, the seemingly totally different “The Searcher” by Tana French. Human beings spend way too much time on the surface, looking to see if the exact right word or term was used, seeing if the right religious rites were performed exactly as prescribed (by the humans who created them), instead of thinking about the intention of the act. I’m tired of it. Here we see young Hayat trying to figure out his place in the world and his place in his religion and over and over he finds superficial interpretations. Only his “Aunt” Mina really connects with him. The novel deals a lot with forgiveness and how one can find a way to forgive themselves for a terrible wrong. It is not easy. The fight for Hayat to balance the intense need his has to live his faith with his equally intense desire to be a free and independent thinker is one that flows out beyond the narrow confines of the specific religion involved here. It is a constant struggle. Hayat works through all of these issues with puberty thrown in to boot, while watching his parents constantly fight and struggle. All of this is familiar to me and I realized, as Hayat does when he stays at a friend’s house later in the book, “thinking that his parents—vital and bickering—weren’t all that different from mine.” So this book has it all, it allowed me to experience a world that I did not know, but it also spoke directly to me and the universality of our experience. It was a journey that left me a better person than when I started, and I can’t think of higher praise that that. ( )

Mom was reading this Arab-American bildungsroman (now that's an odd phrase) in her book group. Mom enjoyed the audiobook, where Akhtar displays a talent for voices in his narration. (The author's play "Disgraced" was staged this year in Chicago and off-Broadway). Akhtar's boyhood home was a few miles from mine, and judging by his 12-year-old Pakistani protagonist it does seem like a safe place to raise the kids. We don't see much of the conflict hinted at in young Hayat Shah's household. If the presence of sin draws him to the Quran, one would expect at least to hear screaming arguments or police sirens. Hayat's eventual disenchantment with religion comes just as lightly. Akhtar's story, like his Midwestern Muslim narrator, seems a bit too earnest.

From the opening scenes of this novel, where the main character eats a bratwurst at a ball game, then goes to a Survey of Islamic History class the next day, I knew that I was going to like this book. There have been many books, fiction and nonfiction, written about those raised in a Christian tradition and who have deconverted, who have questioned their faith and moved form believer to agnostic or atheist; I have read and reviewed many of these. But this is the first book I have read which speaks from a Muslim point of view -- in this case, a ten-year-old boy named Hayat, born to a struggling Pakistani couple in the Midwest. It was revealing to see how similar the progression of the infatuation and adoption of religious faith is in a young Muslim and a young Christian, as well as the beginnings of the conflicts within those religious tenets, and how they are played out in a familial setting. Hayat's confusion and concern over the interpersonal turmoil amongst the adults in his life is something that carries over to young people from any cultural or religious background. This is one of my personal favorites out of the novels I've read in recent months. ( )