The Rug Merchant

I adored the Kite Runner and Thousand Splendid Suns, and now I'm trying to plod my way through Reading Lolita in Tehran, and I just needed something more...captivating. Well, I found this book to be a page-turner, and finished it in just two days. The writer does her job well, inasmuch as I felt I was there with Ushman and Stella, seeing what they were seeing, smelling what they were smelling. I really enjoyed the symbolism of the kilim and Ushman's dreams. This book enchanted me, however briefly, and broke my heart, too. It is romantic and exotic without being trashy or preachy. I loved Khaled Hosseini's books and loved this one, too. This is a small book and would pack well into a purse.

I usually read thrillers such as "The Da Vinci Code" or high-fantasy novels by the likes of George R. R. Martin, and I count "Aliens" as my all-time favorite movie. So, not the type of person who, upon hearing that a book is about an Iranian rug dealer and his relationship with a young American woman, shouts, "Awesome! Bring it on!" Yet circumstances led me to read this book, which I started with some trepidation. (I've been burned occasionally by books with reviews that state, "Well-written," and "true-to-life characters," which can sometimes translate to, "Difficult, hard to chisel through prose," and "boring.") "Well-written" here means an eloquent, fast-moving writing style that effortlessly meshes the interesting, hard-to-predict, and dare I say it, true-to-life characters (in a good way) with subtle truths about human nature that deep down we all know, but since we rarely see them discussed we can't help but smile as we read them. (One tiny example, "Ushman looks at the lighted windows and yearns to be let in. Even if there is no soccer match on TV. Just to sit around a table with people in the middle of the night, their camaraderie heightened by the absurdity of the hour.") For me, this was a page-turner in a far different manner than what I'm used to, but a page-turner nonetheless. Highly recommended (even if you DO have a book about rampaging prehistoric sharks on the top of your Wish List).

This one touched my heart. You can read the plot details in the other reviews ... it was the emotional connection with the character Ushman that surprised me. His loneliness and confusion of his place in his world was so well conveyed, that I felt and understood and related. We all have our sad stories, it's remembering that they all had elements of joy as well. A suprising and strong debut novel.

This novel is as rich, moving and complex as the rarest handmade carpet which its lonely Iranian protagonist sells. He has grown up with them, and the selling of them takes him away from his much adored wife in Iran to New York City. His wife, made miserable and blaming Ushman for her inability to bear a child to term, refuses to follow him, takes up with a lover and leaves him. But he cannot leave her in his heart, even though he is fascinated by and much loves a young college student who is far from his culture and his melancholy soul. The portrait of Ushman is one of the deepest portraits of a man I have read. I closed the book a few times because I felt I had in decency to look away from the intimacy of his hopes and his pain as he struggles with the strangeness of his new country when all he longs for is his old life. Such a tender man, so complex! What a wonderful book! I will be reading it again soon.

For three years, Iranian Ushman Khan, a Manhattan rug merchant, has lived in New York, building his business, planning to send for his wife, Farak, who is caring for his ailing mother in Iran. After a series of miscarriages has tainted their marriage, Farak informs her disbelieving husband that she is pregnant, applying for a divorce and moving to Istanbul with the father of her child. His world turned upside down, the very conventional Iranian is adrift in a city of strangers until he meets Stella, a college student. They share a cup of coffee and part, but Stella comes one day to Ushman's store after a family tragedy, confident that her new friend will understand. These two unlikely people are attracted to each other, gradually coming together, the lovely young woman and the disillusioned man who still struggles with the English language and the easy intimacy of the Americans: "She is from a different world; her trajectory, even momentarily, could never mirror his own." A stranger in a strange land, Ushman is devastated, his life unexpectedly empty. Stella sees him, instinctively drawn to his honesty and intensity as they begin an awkward dance of discovery: "This is the first time he has been touched in America." The balance between them is tentative, Ushman inhibited by customs as yet unlearned and Stella's youthful enthusiasm tinged with uncertainty, their differences insignificant for this brief, shining moment. What Stella assumes is grief is really shame, but together they rise above the tensions that threaten a new and tenuous romance, forgiveness simple when there is no history to poison their time together. "The carpets of Iran, the culture of Islam and the craft of textiles are the landscape of his unhappiness", yet, with Stella, Ushman enters a parallel universe where his past does not intrude on the present, an island of intimacy that heals his broken heart and brings him unexpected joy. Ushman is a revelation, adjusting to a country where his success is undermined by Farak's indifference and the self-doubt that complicates his relationship with Stella. Trapped between anguish and the headiness of new experience, Ushman is a complicated, beautifully rendered character, a cultured, refined businessman ambushed by his feelings, thrust into an intimate relationship with his own heart. This lonely, disappointed man is a rare jewel in a glass and concrete forest and does not see himself clearly or appreciate his attractiveness to women who yearn for such sensitivity, who, like the lovely Stella, are drawn to emotional accessibility. The Rug Merchant is an intricate and nuanced love story, written with a delicate, deft touch. Luan Gaines/ 2006.