Bone Worship

by Elizabeth Eslami

Jasmine Fahroodhi has always been fascinated by her enigmatic Iranian father. With his strange habits and shrouded past, she can't fathom how he ended up marrying her prim American mother.


But lately love in general feels just as incomprehensible. After a disastrous romance sends her into a tailspin, causing her to fail out of college just shy of graduation, a conflicted Jasmine returns home without any idea where her life is headed.


Her father has at least one idea—he has big plans for a hastegar, an arranged marriage. Confused, furious, but intrigued, Jasmine searches for her match, meeting suitor after suitor with increasingly disastrous (and humorous) results. As she begins to open herself up to the mysteries of familial and romantic love, Jasmine discovers the truth about her father, and an even more evasive figure—herself—in this highly original and striking debut novel.

Genres: Fiction, Iran, Contemporary, Muslims, Literary Fiction, Middle East, Family

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Elizabeth Eslami is the author of the story collection, Hibernate, for which she was awarded the 2013 Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction, and the novel Bone Worship (Pegasus, 2010). Her essays, short stories, and travel writing have appeared most recently in The Sun and Witness, and her work is featured in the anthologies Tremors: New Fiction By Iranian American Writers and Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema. She has taught in the MFA Programs at Manhattanville College and Indiana University, and she is currently the Hampton and Esther Boswell Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at DePauw University.

Reviews

[Elizabeth Eslami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Then again, I might be biased.

[Bria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm honestly surprised this book isn't more popular than it currently is.

This book was a random find at a half price bookstore. That usually means:

1. The book will be terribly awful and I will want to get rid of it as soon as possible.
2. The book is absolutely amazing and I will keep it.

It's a pretty simple world when it comes to used books.

Obviously by my 5-star rating, this book was an incredible find. The book description doesn't do it justice. This book tackles complex topics like:

-Why do you love your family even though they are crazy, make fun of you and cause you to have never ending headaches?
-How do you find what you are meant to do in life?
-Can you really trust your parents to know what is right for you?
-Do you know yourself as well as you thought you did?
-And does finding love really come as easily as we hope it does?

Instead of slamming you with these big life questions, the author slowly shows you how Jasmine is able to answer them on her own. Her character grows into herself beautifully and simply.

The author takes you through family fights, dropping out of college, a run-a-way son and a struggle to find love and purpose all to demonstrate that you might have more in common with your crazy family than you realize and that they have made you who you are. She also heartbreakingly demonstrated that love isn't all hearts and flowers. Sometimes it's just like the image of Jasmine's mother staying with Jasmine's bullheaded, strange father even after their fiery passion for each other is gone and she struggles to understand why they still love each other as he slowly gets sicker and sicker.

Also Jasmine's kiss with the final suitor that her parents find for her is epic.

[BCDee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Struggling to finish this. Keep checking that this isn`t catalogued under Young Adult - the protagonist`s flaws, rather than coming across as complexity, make her seem spoiled and selfish. Her decisions, and motivations for the decisions that she makes in the book, are more suited to the mentality of a 14-16 year old rather than a 21 year old college dropout. The book had so much promise, tackling subject matter in a way that is rarely done (a positive spin on arranged marriage from an immigrant POV), but falls short of truly examining interracial and intercultural issues given that she has a white American mother. The writer is gifted - her prose has moments of sharp wit and poetry, but character development is one dimensional. I have high hopes for her second novel.

[Catherine Knight · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually skimmed quite a bit of this because I found the format to be a bit distracting and disjointed. Bouncing between Jasmine's reality and the stories she's created to fill in the gaps of what she does not know about her father was confusing to me. I had a hard time discerning when the stories of Jasmine's father were stories he had actually told her and what were conjecture. Add to that the strange relationship of her parents, and the relationship she has with her parents which felt odd and uncomfortable to me. Toward the end I started to enjoy it more, but overall was a little disappointed. It felt like Eslami tried to fit too many things into the novel, and some of the pacing felt a bit slow. It was a $2.99 ebook at Amazon though so, overall not too bad, just not exactly what I'd hoped for.

[Lyle Dechant · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I like best here is the twist on the classic theme of cultural and generational conflict. Stories of children torn between two cultures are (for me) always intrinsically captivating, but this book poses the question somewhat differently. Jasmine, the daughter of an Iranian immigrant and his American wife, sees little reason to commit to school or life in general when her parents have resolved to chart her life for her. But just as she begins to wonder why her father has kept his heritage secret from her, it is forced decisively upon her -- in the form of a traditional Iranian arranged marriage. So how can the child of an immigrant come to know and understand an alien heritage, if she simultaneously rejects its presence in her own life? Jasmine is not torn between cultures; she is torn between attitudes, between attraction and repulsion, acquiescence and defiance.
Eslami's prose is mind-blowing; I've had the pleasure of previous exposure to her magic toolbox of words before, but here she is at her best: ranging effortlessly from lyrical to explosive, from chiseled to tender. Skillful plotting also makes the book so satisying: several surprises emerge as the novel tracks Jasmine's development, not the least of which is her ultimate resolution of her father's get-married-or-else ultimatum.
The protagonist Jasmine is wry and sharp, and winningly misanthropic, like a bi-racial Juno but with profounder things on her mind. I think that her pleading, almost desperate drive to connect with a father she barely knows, actually resonates just as loudly as the more tangible issues of cultural conflict that provide the framework for their confrontation. Five stars, and I can't wait to read more!

[MAP · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know how in dreams, you step off of your front porch and suddenly you're in an airplane? And it kind of makes sense, but it's still in its own way confusing, because the fact that the dream keeps constantly shifting means you can't ever predict what's going to happen or use previous parts of the dream to inform what you're doing now? That was how I felt with this novel.

It's a sort of coming-of-age story, with an Iranian twist of a father who wants to arrange a marriage for his flunked-out-of-college daughter. But there's a sense of unreality to whole thing. To name some more concrete examples, I could never work out where her mother worked -- sometimes she seemed to leave the house and go to work, sometimes she seemed to work from home. I couldn't pin down her stories about her father. Sometimes they seemed entirely made up, sometimes it seemed like she had partial information and filled in the gaps (and I couldn't tell where reality ended and the filled-in gaps began), and sometimes the stories seemed to be entirely true. The entire book felt like I was supposed to know all of this, but there were no context clues to help me do so. I felt frustrated, tense, and unsatisfied throughout the entire story. There was also a sense of having a hand pushing me back throughout the story -- like I could never get close enough to any of the characters, not even Jasmine, the narrator. I was kept at arms length from everyone, and therefore liked or sympathized with no one, other than Dr. Ahmadi. Like a dream, everything felt disjointed, unpredictable, and slightly off.

Also, there were some massively depressing pieces that didn't seem to have much to do with moving any plot along. Lots of hurting animals.

[Meagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I've known this author since we were fourteen years old. I should also tell you that I read this book twice in manuscript form, and that did not deter me one second from devouring it whole once it was published. Bone Worship is at once heartbreaking and hilarious. Parents and child sling barbs, trade snark, but at their core, there is love - that deep love that parents and children cannot help but have for one another, despite failing each other again and again. It's that deep love which keeps us connected, parent and child, even when we stumble, and this book investigates that love, turning it over and over until it is as well worn as the worshipped bones of the title. So, yes, I am the proud, cheek-pinching auntie, the friend at the sidelines cheering and waving obnoxious homemade dayglo posters of encouragement, but I am also not fucking around for one itty bitty second when I tell you that this is a fantastic book and I don't know why you aren't reading it right now.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

The daughter of an Iranian immigrant father and American mother, Jasmine returns home to small town Georgia after failing out of college. her father decides an arranged marriage will resolve the situation and sets about finding a suitable match. Jasmine attempts to come to some understanding of her emotionally distant parents and her own identity while wondering if they just might be right about the relative brevity of romantic love. A lovely story that illuminates some of the struggles and confusions of cross-cultural families and both the special connection and the frustrations of the relationships between immigrants and their children. Not a "heavy" book, but well worth reading.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

"it wasn't my taste, but i respect the effort." i felt a little bog-dense reading this; i wish i'd picked up earlier that the protagonist was merely imagining these stories of her father's life. i probably should have figured it out faster, since the father is a strangely silent character. i enjoyed the zoo scenes, but i found a strange sense of detachment in the protagonist's relationships to the people in her life; especially since she always called him "dr. ahmadi" through the end of the book.

[K. Lincoln · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jasmine is going home to her parents' house after failing out of the last year of college.

Her American mother is obsessed with clothes and perfume, and her Iranian father is obsessed with finding Jasmine a husband so she'll be "taken care of."

Jasmine is just obsessed with herself, and her father's history as a means to understanding how her father treats people and ultimately what she wants to be.

Bone Worship has two noteworthy elements for me; a protagonist who is snarky, defaces library books, is irritable and blunt, and seems to actively want to sabotage all her relationships, and yet you still root for her to get away from all the inappropriate men her father finds for her.

The other element that was tricky, yet enjoyable, was that Jasmine's telling of her father's stories about Iran are all semi-fictional. She's making up the bits her taciturn father never really explained, so while they are unreliable narratives for understanding her father's true history, they are extremely revealing for Jasmine's inner life.

I also enjoyed the insight into the poop-and-scoop duties of a low-level zoo worker.

Nicely done, interesting look at a bicultural girl navigating both American and semi-fictional Iranian worlds to figure out her own life. (without some of the polarizing political diatribes that might have taken away from the emotionally laden family content.)

This Book's Food Designation Rating: A handful of chex mix for reaching into the narrative "bag" and never knowing what you were going to come up with but enjoying the mix nonetheless.

[Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This fits into my category of books that I finished but that disappointed me. The subject matter definitely appealed to me, but I found the story lacking.

Jasmine is a bright young college drop-out. She leaves the University of Chicago to go home to live with her parents in Georgia. Her distant, Iranian father and her prim American mother determine that they should arrange a marriage for her.

Jasmine's life is aimless. She appears to be directionless because of not really knowing or understanding her father. She makes up stories about his life because he has shared so little about himself. She doesn't develop close attachments to anyone, presumably because of the distance with which she is raised by both her parents. She doesn't have any friends or close relationships.

I found it very hard to care about what happened to Jasmine, and this is why I'm giving it two stars. I often thought of giving up on the book because I couldn't get engaged. Eslami skillfully wove metaphors into the narrative and clearly did her research on animal behavior. (Who knew that snakes were deaf? I guess Eslami did better research than JK Rowling...) Toward the end, it started getting more interesting (when she began working in the zoo), and I did keep reading, but ultimately, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book about an American/Irani woman, who after failing the last semester of college, comes home to her parents in Arrowood, GA. He father, an Iranian born doctor feels that if she didn't get her degree and has no plans, it is time for her to get married and tries to arrange a marriage for her.

While her life is going nowhere, her father advertises in Arabic papers and websites for her suitable mate. A parade of men comes to dinner at her house, but she is not at all interested. After several attemts at getting a job, she is hired by the Macon Zoo to tend and clean animal cages, even though the director feels she is overqualified since she almost has a zoology degree.

At first she feels that her father's husband search is silly, but as time passes,she does find love with one of the candidates, a 40ish opthamalogist of Iranian background.

Lost of conflict with Jasmine and her Iranian father and American mother, but a good book about American versus Iranian culture.

[Karol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bone Worship follows Jasmine, a college dropout whose parents are determined to find a husband for her. She has no intention of going through with this arrangement, but begrudgingly she goes along with it almost as an experiment—to prove her parents wrong. She retreats into books, finds a job at the zoo doing poop ‘n scoop, and sabotages her father’s attempts to find a mate for her. She envies her brother, Uri, an adventurer who escapes home, but unlike him she is drawn to her remote Iranian father and her over-sharing American mother who had married for love. Disappointed in love, her parents only want security for Jasmine. The novel moves poetically into her father’s past as a boy in Iran, as Jasmine struggles to understand her father and his hardness, which has become her own. Along the way, she meets an unlikely suitor, a broken man who becomes whole with her even as she refuses to love him back. Bone Worship is a surprising and funny story about about the unpredictable nature of love.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This first novel by Iranian-American author Eslami started slow for me. We kept changing scenes, moving between past and present, and nothing seemed to be happening. However, it’s one of those books that sneak up on you and suddenly you don’t want to stop reading. In the end, you find yourself in tears, saying, “this is so beautiful.” It’s layered, it’s full of insights about Iranian culture, and the characters are so real you want to hug them all. Protagonist Jasmine Fahroodi has just finished four years of college but didn’t graduate due to a last-term rash of bad grades. Her parents insist that since she didn’t graduate, they must now arrange a marriage for her. She resists as one candidate after another comes to dinner. Meanwhile, she struggles to figure out what to with her life, now that her dreams of a career using her double majors of zoology and biology seems unlikely. On top of this, she searches to find the man inside her stern, quirky immigrant father who has closed himself off to everyone.

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. Not since Bella Swan has there been a heroine I so wanted to shake some sense into. But, unlike Stephenie Meyer, Elizabeth Eslami makes it work. I did care about Jasmine, even when I wanted to toss the book across the room, like when she went after Don. Oh, my.

It was harder to figure out the rest of her dysfunctional family, but it makes sense because we are seeing them through her eyes, and let’s face it – she barely understood them either. I like how Jasmine says she knows seven things about her father and through the course of the book they are fleshed out. I did get a little confused here and there, because apparently some of the flashbacks are her imagining what happened and not necessarily “fact”?

I enjoyed Ms. Eslami’s style of writing. The wedding dream was great. The ice block melting between her and her brother – genius. I loved this book and can’t wait to see what she delivers next!

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

What happens when you fail out of university, then arrive home only to have your parents advocate for an arranged marriage? That's exactly what happens to Jasmine, daughter to an Iranian father and American mother living in Georgia.

As I read this book, I found myself at times annoyed and at others curious--but throughout, I found I wanted to keep reading. And it wasn't until I was nearly finished with the book that I realized why I liked it: Jasmine's story reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams. I found that Bone Worship was really Jasmine's journey to reconcile her relationship with her father as well as her desire to find her own path in life, the life that will fulfill what she really wants and what makes her happy. I loved seeing Jasmine come into her own, learning to assert herself, finding what was most improtant to her. While not what I anticipated when I purchased the book, Bone Worship was still one I enjoyed.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Eslami took me by the hand and led me into a fascinating, well written story that was a fresh and surprising combination of two themes -- familial dysfunction and cultural clashes. There is much to admire about the way in which Eslami created both desperation and wit within the personality of Jasmine, a young Iranian-American woman who, in so many ways, was rudderless.

Jasmine's longing to know her emotionally distant father, her confusion and pain over his expectations -vs- her own desires, and her very real emotions kept me turning pages. I applaud Eslami for her wise and insightful portrayal of Jasmine as she searched for her own identity and autonomy. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly!

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because the inside cover sounded interesting but I really wasn't expecting much, however it was a pleasantly surprising read. It's the story of Jasmine, a half America/half Iranian college drop out who comes home to take some time off before getting on with the rest of her life. Her father Yusef has always been a mystery to her, and becomes even more of a mystery when he begins setting her up with blind dates so he can put together an arranged marriage for her like is customary in his home land. The book follows her disastrous meetings with her fathers "approved" men and her own journey to discover what she really wants out of life.

[Nisha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book where you completely and totally hated the protagonist but could not stop reading it? I hated Jasmine. Absolutely loathed her. She was whiny, childish, and the things she did, did not make logical sense. Her hangups about life were juvenile. I felt like Mr. Farhoodi, who had the potential to be a great character, was not as three-dimensional as he could have been.

The only reason this book gets two stars is because of Eslami's story telling - such as the story about the plums or Mr. Farhoodi's childhood in Iran. Those stories were captivating, and incredibly well written.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Eslami draws me into the conflicts and tension of trying to live in two worlds. I knew Bone Worship was as term elephant behaviorists used to describe how elephants remembered one of their tribe long after death. I adored the craft Eslami displayed tracing the bones of each of her characters. Her story is compelling, and she performs that rare service: allows you to view a world you most likely would never understand, but do once you finished the novel.

Family, loyalty, love, haunting pasts, questioning who we are, who we think we are.....it's all here.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book. I don't really know what to say except that I had no expectations for this, just needed to read something that wasn't fantasy and this was on the new release shelves at the library. It caught my eye, I read the blurb, and tried it. There is some real humor in here and some beautifully crafted language that I couldn't help but quote here. It was funny, real, sad, somewhat in the way that movies like "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Win-Win" are. It's very tender and slow but graceful and smart. I am really rather impressed.

[Angie Never · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book kept me constantly surprised. I was especially delighted with the anecdotes about animals behavior and the sections about working a zoo, which I didn't predict when I selected the book. I was also surprised to feel that I sympathized with the narrator's parents much more than I understood her. I often felt like, Will you shut up for minute? Your mom is trying to say something important!

[Michele Hush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bone Worship centers on a young woman, Jasmine Fahroodhi, who has self-sabotaged her way out of college at the moment when she returns home to her American mother and brusque, difficult-to-know Iranian father. It is a story of rebellion and tradition, including the tradition of arranged marriage; most of all of it is a story of discovery of self, strength and family. Eslami is an exceptionally graceful writer. This is her first novel. I look forward to more.

[Rasheedah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the story being told, however I think that it was poorly written. The flash-backs about stories her father had told her were kind of just thrown in there all over the place without any real transition from what was actually going on at the time, and though they gave some background on her father, after a while they were just boring and didn't seem to have anything to do with where the story was at.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simply put, I really loved this novel. The main character, Jasmine, isn't lovable in the traditional way per se, but I CARED about her. I wanted to know where life was taking her ...and to hear how she arrived at wherever it was she wound up. Every character piqued my curiosity. My only wish is that I was able to learn more. This gem is prime for a sequel!

[Anita Oz · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and different book about an Iranian/American girl growing up with a very strange Father. As we learn about her peculiar life, she eventually finds love in an arranged marriage. A bizarre central character that you grow to really like. Well written, funny at times and a unique insight to a mixed heritage family.

[Shawna · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author had some interesting things going on, but they never coalesced. In fact, I think there was too much. Rather than focus on a story, the author focuses on a life and all the separate stories that are a part of one life. As a result the book had little direction and I never really cared about the character.

[MaryannC Victorian Dreamer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sorry I dont want to tear down an author's hard work, but I just wasnt feeling this book. Jasmin F. came across as whiny and rude, and the cultural difference thing with the parents just wasnt believable the way it was written. I didnt feel anything for the character except annoyed and I didnt finish the book.

[Jane Hammons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting characters and setting, I especially appreciated the layered structure of the book--stories within stories, mingling past and present--and also the way it does not easily resolve the problems related to definitions of success and ideas about arranged marriage.

[Dessa Song · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, the premise seemed really interesting and I was interested in reading a more optimistic portrayal of arranged marriages which is a notoriously controversial way of finding a spouse, especially as a westerner. But this book did not accomplish that and I really hated every single character in the novel.

Jasmine is nowhere near the independent woman that I think she wanted to portray. In fact, quite the opposite. She is whiny, incredibly childish, and in some cases comes across as entitled. I don't understand why she dropped out of college in the last semesters, the author danced around it and never gave us a clear answer which meant I had zero sympathy for her situation. She is both a pushover and a bully, being incredibly rude to her parents and potential suitors (not that they were any better), but goes around with a woe-is-me attitude and a victim mentality. The zoo scenes were the perfect portrayal of this. She goes in as a custodial worker (totally fine) but then when she has three people say "hey, you should try to become an animal trainer" she boo-hoos her way through the novel, scares herself of anything related to self-improvement, and only ends up applying for the trainer position because Dr. Ahmadi tells her to. Speaking of, I don't know what Dr. Ahmadi sees in Jasmine. He says she is a strong, confident women when I just see someone who needs to be slapped silly.

Jasmine's parents are awful. Her father is historically physically abusive (she tells us how he beats multiple dogs with a shovel and, during his childhood, pushes his cousin off a wall), and currently psychologically/mentally abusive to Jasmine. He calls her stupid constantly, yells at her, mansplains, threatens, and gaslights her with the whole arranged marriage thing. He doesn't take her feelings into consideration at all. No wonder the brother, Uri, hasn't come home in years. I wouldn't want to be a part of this family either. Not to mention, he completely ignores doctors' advice after his surgery but is a doctor himself? No.

Her mother is no better and constantly backs her father up in everything he does, going so far as to say that Jasmine needs to needs to give her dad a break even though he is at the center of all of the problems in this novel. She yells at Jasmine when Jasmine propositions Don, a married man, rather than finding out why she felt compelled to do that in the first place. Maybe if she did, she would understand this incredibly unhealthy and toxic family structure that has clearly taken a toll on Jasmine's mental health. For God's sake, she left Jasmine's father in the past, she of all people should understand how his treatment of Jasmine has impacted her self-confidence, view of marriage, and life.

Dr. Ahmadi is kind of creepy. He is basically 15 years older than Jasmine (which, if it was just an age gap, that would have been fine), and is also someone that Jasmine had NO interest in. But because of her dad's blessing and Dr. Ahmadi's "perseverance," Jasmine falls in love with him? No. A woman should be able to say no to someone that they aren't interested in without having to say it over and over and over again in the man's hope that she will wear down and change her mind. This perpetuates the societal problem of of toxic, and potentially dangerous, masculinity. The fact that it is portrayed in this book as romantic and "slow-burning love" is, frankly, disgusting.

If I was Jasmine's friend, I would want to help her escape an abusive environment and try to help her regain some self-confidence and independence. But honestly, based on the rest of her characteristics and personality, I would never want to be friends with her. No redemption and no sympathy from me.

I will definitely NOT be reading any more books from this author.