Geometry of God

Loved this book. It is clever and insightful and brilliantly written. Was delighted that I was reading this on Darwin's birthday this year - it gave me much to think about.

With her latest book, The Geometry of God, acclaimed and outspoken novelist Uzma Aslam Khan brings us a fresh new viewpoint of peoples and places in Pakistan. Two very spirited women, physically blind Mehwish and her older sister Amal, who acts as Mehwish's eyes, tell one tale through three perspectives: theirs and their scientist grandfather's. Beyond the physical, there is more than one way to be blind. Amal may be her sister's eyes, but her mind and heart need to be open to see as well. As we follow the various storylines told via the voices of these believable characters, we get a glimpse of their rich history, natural beauty, and religious beliefs. The reader discovers the country and its fundamental foundation as the sisters explore the messages left on and in the land with their eyes, fingers and feet. During a difficult time of religious tension in the Middle East, The Geometry of God shares the feelings and personalities of the Pakistani people and how they are coping, growing and preserving their lives. The writing is vivid and rich. The reader is rewarded with new viewpoints, a welcome change from the sensationalized and often macabre portrayals of Pakistani people and the country they fight so hard to preserve. by Rhonda Esakov for Story Circle Book Reviews reviewing books by, for, and about women

A book of conflict-ridden Pakistan that's comical, sensory, tragic, defiant. The grandfather of Amal and Mehwish is believable, loving but irascible, brilliant but blind to the needs of others. He inspires the child Amal to look closely at the natural world and to the world of men, and gives her the training she needs to enter these worlds. Yet he doesn't "see" her when she does. He sees only the girl who received his knowledge. I loved the parts in Lahore's Inner City, where Amal and Omar meet. The contrast between dead bodies (the fossils) and living bodies (the lovers) is deftly done. The physical aspects of both death and life are beautifully described. Amal teaches her blind sister Mehwish not only to see, but also to "taste", and taste has many meanings in the book. When Mehwish invents a playful language of her own, she's described as tasting. When the grandfather comes out of prison compromised, he's described as losing his taste. When Amal is with Omar, she "tastes" him "item by item". When at work Amal teaches her anatomy students to dissect a shrew, she describes skinning a dead thing as a "need to quantify with a thumb, to nourish a sensory chart, to taste, (it) becomes a primal pursuit, like Mewish's craving for depth and contour." There's an intensity, a primal hunger, in all the characters, a longing for a Paksitan that feeds the spirit as well as the flesh, instead of cramping and extinguishing these vital appetites. There's a suggestion that all realms need to be reinvented, the material as well as the divine, in order to live - taste - better. The book forces you to think, yet it's wicked funny too. The scene where Amal shops for Omar's underwear is roguish, and reminiscent of an earlier one, when Noman's walking through the underwear alley in the Inner City with a Russian soldier. Characters keep chancing on absurd situations. We later find out the Russian's selling gems on a glacier in Pakistan to fund the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, i.e., his enemies. And in the heresy report against the grandfather, he's accused of writing the names of the caliphs on the "souls" of his feet. There's a breezy, matter-of-fact way the dark elements of the novel are told, all while hitting pretty big themes. Powerful stuff.

I'm a big fan of Khan's previous book, Trespassing,Trespassing: A Novel and was excited her new work is now out in the US so ordered it immediately. The Geometry of God is very different than Trespassing but I think I like them both equally. This one is part fiction, poetry, science, art. The drawings are cool. The story's told by three different characters in sections or "gateways." In the first gateway, The World, Amal discovers a whale fossil in the mountains of Pakistan. The discovery is the spark that starts the fire for the religious firebrands in the second gateway, The Man, told by Noman (get it, no man), the son of a right-wing politician. In gateway three, The Word, told by Amal's hilarious (and blind) sister, false charges of blasphemy have been put on their grandfather, a scientist and man of inquiry. It was chilling to see how creationism plays out in an Islamic country like Pakistan. The characters collide, collude, and have to make a kind of peace in the mess of the blasphemy charges in the fifth and final gateway, the Afterlife, but it's the fourth one, The Love, that's my favorite. Its depiction of parallel loves finding and losing one another is beautiful and sensual. Scenes between Amal and her husband make me ask when I last read a hot scene between a husband and wife; who says they can't also be lovers? But it's what happens to the grandfather and his best friend that's the most powerful development of the book. It still makes me cringe. This novel is its own kind of creation - really worth reading.