What do you think?
Rate this book
The Almond in the Apricot
The Almond in the Apricot, a debut novel by Iranian-American Goudarzi, is about two individuals whose paths cross in the most unusual of ways: a woman coming to terms with the wreckage of her once-orderly life and a tween girl struggling to live an everyday in a war-torn country.
Emma had the perfect trifecta: a long-term, albeit boring, job as an engineer in wastewater management; a steady relationship with her reliable boyfriend; and an adoring and creative best friend (about whom she wasn't quite ready to admit her unrequited feelings). However, after one crackling, long-distance phone call, her world changed forever.
Now she's having nightmares that threaten to disrupt the space-time continuum -- nightmares of hiding from missiles in basements, of glass shattering in the night from nearby explosions. But these nightmares, featuring a young girl named Lily, seem all too real, and Emma's waking life begins to be affected by the events that transpire in this mysterious wartime landscape. The Almond in the Apricot explores love, grief, and the possibility that the universe might be bigger than either Emma or Lily ever imagined.
Emma had the perfect trifecta: a long-term, albeit boring, job as an engineer in wastewater management; a steady relationship with her reliable boyfriend; and an adoring and creative best friend (about whom she wasn't quite ready to admit her unrequited feelings). However, after one crackling, long-distance phone call, her world changed forever.
Now she's having nightmares that threaten to disrupt the space-time continuum -- nightmares of hiding from missiles in basements, of glass shattering in the night from nearby explosions. But these nightmares, featuring a young girl named Lily, seem all too real, and Emma's waking life begins to be affected by the events that transpire in this mysterious wartime landscape. The Almond in the Apricot explores love, grief, and the possibility that the universe might be bigger than either Emma or Lily ever imagined.
- GenresFiction
252 pages, Hardcover
First published January 18, 2022
8 people are currently reading
357 people want to read
About the author
Sara Goudarzi
4 books8 followersSara Goudarzi’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic News, The Adirondack Review and Drunken Boat, among others. She is the author of Leila’s Day at the Pool and Amazing Animals from Scholastic Inc. Sara has taught writing at NYU and is a 2017 Writers in Paradise Les Standiford fellow and a Tin House alumna. Born in Tehran, she grew up in Iran, Kenya and the U.S. and currently lives in Brooklyn.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 17, 2021
What a surprise! I found this on a review site and downloaded it because I was curious. And I found myself completely sucked in to a fascinating story. Emma is finding she's suddenly exhausted every day, not feeling well rested. She's waking up in weird spots and having a continuation dream night after night.
I found both parts, the dreams and the real world, both fascinating. I liked the before and after flashbacks and trying to understand her sadness. I was surprised by how engrossed I was in the story, making guesses and trying to understand. I liked this, so glad I gave it a try!
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Edelweiss. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
I found both parts, the dreams and the real world, both fascinating. I liked the before and after flashbacks and trying to understand her sadness. I was surprised by how engrossed I was in the story, making guesses and trying to understand. I liked this, so glad I gave it a try!
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Edelweiss. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
August 23, 2021
The Almond in the Apricot by Sara Goudarzi is a story that explores the possibility of parallel universes or alternate dimensions… or at least, that’s what Emma, the main character wants you to believe.
▫️
Emma’s life takes a turn when she loses her best friend. She begins having strange dreams and is convinced she’s traveling to a different dimension. Everyone around her thinks that she is just having a difficult time coping with her loss. Will Emma be able to figure out the truth before it destroys her? You’ll have to read to find out. 🍑
▫️
This book gave me Donnie Darko vibes due to the subject matter. 😱
▫️
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars ⭐️
▫️
This book will be released in January 2022. A huge thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC for review.
▫️
Emma’s life takes a turn when she loses her best friend. She begins having strange dreams and is convinced she’s traveling to a different dimension. Everyone around her thinks that she is just having a difficult time coping with her loss. Will Emma be able to figure out the truth before it destroys her? You’ll have to read to find out. 🍑
▫️
This book gave me Donnie Darko vibes due to the subject matter. 😱
▫️
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars ⭐️
▫️
This book will be released in January 2022. A huge thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC for review.
December 15, 2021
I received an ARC of this book.
The description for this debut calls it “magical”, and that’s incredibly apt—Goudarzi’s prose twinkles with wonder in this novel about two lives intersecting through dreamscapes.
Emma is a grieving young professional whose life is falling apart. Lily is a young girl plagued by bombs and terror. When Emma sleeps, it’s Lily’s life she inhabits. Emma becomes fixated on her strange maybe-dreams-maybe-realities, and the pair's lives begin to intersect in a reeling journey.
The structure of this book takes a bit of getting used to, but once I figured it out, I loved it. Emma is an engrossing character whose pain I wanted to solve and mend. This is fantastical literary fiction at its best, with quick pacing and warm prose. Definitely recommend!
The description for this debut calls it “magical”, and that’s incredibly apt—Goudarzi’s prose twinkles with wonder in this novel about two lives intersecting through dreamscapes.
Emma is a grieving young professional whose life is falling apart. Lily is a young girl plagued by bombs and terror. When Emma sleeps, it’s Lily’s life she inhabits. Emma becomes fixated on her strange maybe-dreams-maybe-realities, and the pair's lives begin to intersect in a reeling journey.
The structure of this book takes a bit of getting used to, but once I figured it out, I loved it. Emma is an engrossing character whose pain I wanted to solve and mend. This is fantastical literary fiction at its best, with quick pacing and warm prose. Definitely recommend!
December 30, 2021
Sara Goudarzi’s February 15, ’22 debut delves deep into the intriguing premise of alternate worlds. We follow Emma as her everyday life – dominated by a job designing sewer systems and her immense grief at the loss of her best friend – gives way to vivid nighttime dreams. Dreams so real she comes to believe that she’s living through a young girl named Lily in a war-torn country in the 1980s.
Unable to move past her grief, Emma’s job and love relationship suffer as she searches for answers to her seeming dual existence. Meanwhile, Lily pursues a teen crush with a friend as their families shelter outside their city, which suffers frequent airstrikes.
The Almond in the Apricot builds to a crescendo, sharing facets of Emma’s and Lily’s lives as they move toward an inevitable intersection. Goudarzi finely details all the character relationships, especially illuminating Emma’s guilt-tinged grief and Lily’s innocence as their worlds implode around them. Her nuanced debut definitely will resonate with readers who admire fantastical literary fiction.
Thanks to the author sharing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Unable to move past her grief, Emma’s job and love relationship suffer as she searches for answers to her seeming dual existence. Meanwhile, Lily pursues a teen crush with a friend as their families shelter outside their city, which suffers frequent airstrikes.
The Almond in the Apricot builds to a crescendo, sharing facets of Emma’s and Lily’s lives as they move toward an inevitable intersection. Goudarzi finely details all the character relationships, especially illuminating Emma’s guilt-tinged grief and Lily’s innocence as their worlds implode around them. Her nuanced debut definitely will resonate with readers who admire fantastical literary fiction.
Thanks to the author sharing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
June 9, 2022
I really don't know how to rate this book. Kept reading till the end but disappointed.
February 17, 2022
Beautifully written account of two seemingly disconnected experiences: one of an adult, the other of a girl. One is leading a rather boring life, the other is struggling to survive. Author Sara Goudarzi provides her first novel with lyrical and moving text. I received my copy from the publisher through edelweiss.
April 18, 2022
When words aren’t enough to express acute grief (New Jersey, present-day; 1980s Touran, presumably Iran): Not all time travel plots ask us to interpret the protagonist’s dreams to more potently depict the emotional devastation of profound loss as The Almond in the Apricot exquisitely does.
Two universes – different countries, different time periods, one real the other imaginary – are used to portray the penetrating grip of the death of a best friend – roommate and soul mate – suddenly ripped away, dying instantly in a car crash. Emma and Spencer are domestic partners. If he wasn’t so intent on finding a male lover, they might as well have been married. He may have joked about that, but the sense we get is she would have regardless of their platonic relationship.
The Almond in the Apricot is Emma’s story, mostly what happens to her when her soul mate is gone. As opposed to her relationship with Spencer’s friend Peter, her boyfriend. The threesome worked beautifully, no jealousies. Easy flow that enabled Spencer to come and go as he pleased balanced by times when Peter preferred to opt out of whatever they were planning to do – generally Spencer’s plans since he was drawn to the stimulation of New York City, particularly The Village, whereas Emma gravitates to order. Peter misses his friend too but still sees Emma as his girlfriend.
When the novel opens, her heart isn’t in it anymore but she hasn’t said anything to Peter. How their relationship ends isn’t at the heart of what consumes this story. What’s at stake is Emma’s sanity. How a twenty-nine-year-old deeply grieving Emma from suburban New Jersey (probably New Brunswick area near Rutgers University where she studied), a senior engineer who designs wastewater sewer systems (not a particularly sexy job or typically seen in novels), weathers the trauma.
“It actually doesn’t get easier as time goes by. It gets harder,” Emma says. After her initial “strange sensations and visions,” she began to have bad nightmares, finding herself in the bathroom sick, not knowing how she’d gotten there. “The fear and the uncertainty felt too great for me to grasp,” she admitted to her closest friend and colleague at work, Tina. An interesting storyline as Emma, and the reader, aren’t so sure she’s a friend versus taking advantage of her inability to function exceptionally at work (and socially) like she’d always done.
The intensity of Emma’s grief is too much for her to grasp. The nightmares continue and evolve into something else. More dreamy, familiar, and nostalgic. They’re not normal, because they don’t just recur the same way each night. They progress like you’re watching a “television series with every episode” evolving.
Sara Goudarzi chose to open her thought-provoking, speculative novel in Emma’s dreamscape. These chapters are titled Touran, but it’s not clear if the setting is real or fictional. Born in Tehran, Iran where there’s a region called the Touran Biosphere Reserve, presumably this is or was inspired by her homeland.
It’s Emma who tells us she thinks her dreams are from the past, the 1980s. Which fits the storyline of an eleven-year-old girl, Lily, and her parents hurrying to the basement in the middle of the night when sirens go off alerting them to take cover as they’re living near a war-zone with missiles being shot in the air in Iran, a country at war in 1980 (the first Gulf War) and then ten years later the Second Gulf War lasting another eight years (https://www.history.com/topics/middle... https://www.britannica.com/list/persi... https://www.britannica.com/event/Iraq...).
Reading the novel eight years after Ukraine fought Russia in Crimea isn’t lost on the reader; it feels far-seeing invoking how Emma tries to make sense of her unconscious nighttime experiences that are frightening, life-altering, and surreal and yet as they develop we also see that Lily’s childhood was happy. So, we think Lily is, in part, a reflection of Emma’s past and present when Lily becomes attached to a boy, echoing Emma’s can’t-live-without-Spencer kindred relationship.
Emma’s story gets even stranger and more complex as her dream world starts bleeding into her real one. That’s when we realize how carefully thought out Goudarzi’s novel is. Even the title’s stuffing an almond in a dried apricot tips us off to we’re in for something out of the ordinary. A strong sense that each word is as precise as can be, and as poetic as possible. In fact, the author is an award-winning poet. She’s also someone who’s lived in three diverse universes, if you will: Iran, Kenya, and the US.
There’s something else Goudarzi brings to her novel: a nimbleness with theoretical physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity in which “space-time” provides a fourth-dimension to helping us make sense of the world. Could there be another universe out there we could cross over to that would be happier than this one? This epiphany of sorts happens when Emma turns on the TV and hears a theoretical physics professor from New York University expound on these dense concepts.
Professor Kerr Jacobs tells us that “The idea of time travel and parallel universes has mesmerized people for centuries.” He goes on to say, “Newer ideas about how the universe is built puts forward the possibility that there could be more dimensions than the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time.”
The thirty-something speaker with gorgeous green eyes mesmerizes Emma. Is it because she’s obsessed with understanding the meaning of her dreams? Or, because the professor has the same emerald green eyes as Spencer’s? Same head of dark curls? You can almost guess what happens next.
How long do you think it takes to grieve the death of someone who’s part of you? Are you thinking how dare we put a timeframe on the grief process? What if the sadness is so severe the bereaved person is unable to move on, because the hole is so big inside of you it cannot be closed? At one point do your feelings and behavior become abnormal?
In 2021, the mental health community decided to put a time limit on what’s considered normal and not. The bible of psychological diagnoses, known as the DSM or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, recently added Prolonged Grief Disorder to their fifth edition.
It’s not surprising not everyone agrees with this decision, which sets a one-year timeframe on moving on IF the patient is diagnosed as meeting “some” of eight identified symptoms, such as “identity disruption (e.g., feeling as though part of oneself has died), difficulty with reintegration (e.g., problems engaging with friends, pursuing interests, planning for the future),” and “feeling that life is meaningless.”
Emma exhibits all the symptoms on the DSM list.
Consider also psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Will Emma move through the five stages? Reach the stage of acceptance? In one year’s time?
Putting aside the artificial timeframe, does she sound mentally ill when she asks: “Must there always be something? Why can’t it ever be easy?”
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
Two universes – different countries, different time periods, one real the other imaginary – are used to portray the penetrating grip of the death of a best friend – roommate and soul mate – suddenly ripped away, dying instantly in a car crash. Emma and Spencer are domestic partners. If he wasn’t so intent on finding a male lover, they might as well have been married. He may have joked about that, but the sense we get is she would have regardless of their platonic relationship.
“Emmabelle, if I were going to the moon – Luna, help me – and I could take just one person, woman or man, it would be you.” … “Emmabelle, will you pretend to be my wife, for now and forever?”
The Almond in the Apricot is Emma’s story, mostly what happens to her when her soul mate is gone. As opposed to her relationship with Spencer’s friend Peter, her boyfriend. The threesome worked beautifully, no jealousies. Easy flow that enabled Spencer to come and go as he pleased balanced by times when Peter preferred to opt out of whatever they were planning to do – generally Spencer’s plans since he was drawn to the stimulation of New York City, particularly The Village, whereas Emma gravitates to order. Peter misses his friend too but still sees Emma as his girlfriend.
When the novel opens, her heart isn’t in it anymore but she hasn’t said anything to Peter. How their relationship ends isn’t at the heart of what consumes this story. What’s at stake is Emma’s sanity. How a twenty-nine-year-old deeply grieving Emma from suburban New Jersey (probably New Brunswick area near Rutgers University where she studied), a senior engineer who designs wastewater sewer systems (not a particularly sexy job or typically seen in novels), weathers the trauma.
“It actually doesn’t get easier as time goes by. It gets harder,” Emma says. After her initial “strange sensations and visions,” she began to have bad nightmares, finding herself in the bathroom sick, not knowing how she’d gotten there. “The fear and the uncertainty felt too great for me to grasp,” she admitted to her closest friend and colleague at work, Tina. An interesting storyline as Emma, and the reader, aren’t so sure she’s a friend versus taking advantage of her inability to function exceptionally at work (and socially) like she’d always done.
The intensity of Emma’s grief is too much for her to grasp. The nightmares continue and evolve into something else. More dreamy, familiar, and nostalgic. They’re not normal, because they don’t just recur the same way each night. They progress like you’re watching a “television series with every episode” evolving.
Sara Goudarzi chose to open her thought-provoking, speculative novel in Emma’s dreamscape. These chapters are titled Touran, but it’s not clear if the setting is real or fictional. Born in Tehran, Iran where there’s a region called the Touran Biosphere Reserve, presumably this is or was inspired by her homeland.
It’s Emma who tells us she thinks her dreams are from the past, the 1980s. Which fits the storyline of an eleven-year-old girl, Lily, and her parents hurrying to the basement in the middle of the night when sirens go off alerting them to take cover as they’re living near a war-zone with missiles being shot in the air in Iran, a country at war in 1980 (the first Gulf War) and then ten years later the Second Gulf War lasting another eight years (https://www.history.com/topics/middle... https://www.britannica.com/list/persi... https://www.britannica.com/event/Iraq...).
Reading the novel eight years after Ukraine fought Russia in Crimea isn’t lost on the reader; it feels far-seeing invoking how Emma tries to make sense of her unconscious nighttime experiences that are frightening, life-altering, and surreal and yet as they develop we also see that Lily’s childhood was happy. So, we think Lily is, in part, a reflection of Emma’s past and present when Lily becomes attached to a boy, echoing Emma’s can’t-live-without-Spencer kindred relationship.
Emma’s story gets even stranger and more complex as her dream world starts bleeding into her real one. That’s when we realize how carefully thought out Goudarzi’s novel is. Even the title’s stuffing an almond in a dried apricot tips us off to we’re in for something out of the ordinary. A strong sense that each word is as precise as can be, and as poetic as possible. In fact, the author is an award-winning poet. She’s also someone who’s lived in three diverse universes, if you will: Iran, Kenya, and the US.
There’s something else Goudarzi brings to her novel: a nimbleness with theoretical physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity in which “space-time” provides a fourth-dimension to helping us make sense of the world. Could there be another universe out there we could cross over to that would be happier than this one? This epiphany of sorts happens when Emma turns on the TV and hears a theoretical physics professor from New York University expound on these dense concepts.
Professor Kerr Jacobs tells us that “The idea of time travel and parallel universes has mesmerized people for centuries.” He goes on to say, “Newer ideas about how the universe is built puts forward the possibility that there could be more dimensions than the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time.”
The thirty-something speaker with gorgeous green eyes mesmerizes Emma. Is it because she’s obsessed with understanding the meaning of her dreams? Or, because the professor has the same emerald green eyes as Spencer’s? Same head of dark curls? You can almost guess what happens next.
How long do you think it takes to grieve the death of someone who’s part of you? Are you thinking how dare we put a timeframe on the grief process? What if the sadness is so severe the bereaved person is unable to move on, because the hole is so big inside of you it cannot be closed? At one point do your feelings and behavior become abnormal?
In 2021, the mental health community decided to put a time limit on what’s considered normal and not. The bible of psychological diagnoses, known as the DSM or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, recently added Prolonged Grief Disorder to their fifth edition.
It’s not surprising not everyone agrees with this decision, which sets a one-year timeframe on moving on IF the patient is diagnosed as meeting “some” of eight identified symptoms, such as “identity disruption (e.g., feeling as though part of oneself has died), difficulty with reintegration (e.g., problems engaging with friends, pursuing interests, planning for the future),” and “feeling that life is meaningless.”
Emma exhibits all the symptoms on the DSM list.
Consider also psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Will Emma move through the five stages? Reach the stage of acceptance? In one year’s time?
Putting aside the artificial timeframe, does she sound mentally ill when she asks: “Must there always be something? Why can’t it ever be easy?”
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
April 12, 2023
The book has a couple of interesting ideas and nice description, but overall I think the dialogue was clunky and the plot not very well-thought out. I'm not against under explained open-to-interpretation endings, but in this case I felt that it was a cop-out, to avoid wrapping up the ideas introduced in a sensible way.
May 1, 2022
Underwhelming.
November 24, 2023
i can’t really say why i liked this book. it was realism with the tiniest hint of magic, science with a little fiction. it was a commentary on grief, and a commentary on hope. i think what really carries this novel are its characters—i always wanted to know the next step in their regular, sweet lives. it was peaceful while also capturing the turbulence of modern city life. overall, a solid book.
June 30, 2022
I felt like this book had such potential! Loved the first half… then started to feel like it got a bit lost and by the end I was just trying to finish.
February 9, 2022
This thoughtful novel might take a bit of patience at first but keep with it and it's a lovely meditation on love, loss, and trauma. Emma has been living. a quiet life in New Jersey and then her friend Spence dies. She starts to have dreams, odd dreams, in which she is Lily, a teen living in a war torn country in the 1980s. At least she thinks its a dream except that there are odd things. Her boyfriend thinks, well you can guess what he thinks. Then she finds Kerr, a physicist who helps her understand parallel universes and time travel. Why Lily? What do the two have in common? No spoilers from me. There are some plot holes here but focus on the two women. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. A good read.
March 10, 2022
Gorgeous, open-hearted, beautifully written literary fiction with fantastical elements, a story of two lives and how they may or may not be connected–or even real. Emma's grief and deadened daily life is turned upside down during her dreams where she fights for her life as young Lily. I was entirely enamored with the various possibilities explored for Emma's dreamlife and her search for peace and meaning. The tension propels us along towards a possible intersection, and it's wonderfully realized by giving both lives the commonalities of catastrophic change while juxtaposing Lily's blossoming life with Emma's guilt and grief. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time, and it was a balm to read in today's chaotic times.
February 18, 2022
This book falls somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. The story was different then i expected but i found myself engrossed in both sides of the tale. I felt the main character was likable and I wanted her to sort through her situation. I did find some of her musing to be distracting and lost focus to reading during some sections. All in all, i thought it was a good book and I am intrested to see what the author puts out next.
March 26, 2022
Truly enjoyed this uniquely resonant novel. It utilizes a dual-timeline in a very creative way, and Sara Goudarzi's gorgeous prose made each character feel very vivid and true. I loved the magical realist elements, which delicately embroidered the story's central dilemma without detracting from the novel's grounded, real-world feel. I know this story will stick with me for a long time. Highly recommend!
February 4, 2022
Every scene and sound is vividly presented in this beautifully written story of the life of a young woman who, in her childhood lives in a place under the threat of war, with the tragic consequences of love and loss. In her adulthood, she is transplanted to a place so different from her childhood home that metaphorically could be a different universe. Until the loss of a dear friend brings back the bottled up memories of her childhood in nightmares, and unites the two universes.
March 8, 2022
Lovely story of a young woman's reaction to the loss of her best friend. Here's my New Books Network interview with the author: https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-almon....
May 15, 2022
Where grief meets physics. Yes. 🔥
November 28, 2022
A very enjoyable 3 1/2 stars.
did-not-finish
February 14, 2023Cool premise, excruciatingly boring execution. It really says something about the writing that even with how short the book was, I wasn't able to push through and finish it.
May 15, 2023
lovely, immersive. I like that there wasn't a definitive ending to the story.
January 3, 2024
Interesting concept but ended up being disappointing.
February 5, 2024
maybe two stars is too mean. i don't know. she was in love with her gay best friend and it was weird?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 23, 2025
2.5? 3.5? It just dragged and then finished very quickly in a pretty unsatisfying way.
January 23, 2023
This book was so Interesting and I did enjoy reading it but I found the ending left me unsatisfied. I think it could have gone in a better direction and it honestly just stressed me out.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews