Home of the Floating Lily

May 24, 2021
Abdullah’s well-crafted debut collection explores the lives of Bangladeshi immigrants in Toronto. “A Good Family” depicts the changes in a friendship forged between older, divorced Rubina and neighbor Shumi, recently married and relocated to the “Little Bangladesh” section of the city from Dhaka. There, neighbors gossip about Rubina, who is trying to find a husband for her daughter and teach Shumi to cook with Rubina’s family’s recipes. In “A Secret Affair,” a widower receives weekly calls from his former sister-in-law berating him for his new marriage, just months after her sister’s death. In “Across the Ocean,” 20-something Reema is back home visiting her aunt in Dhaka after a year studying in Toronto. Nearing 60, Aunty has ruthlessly run her household after her husband’s death and her son and his wife moved to the U.S., and now hires and fires a new maid every few months. Reema is soothed by teenage maid Amina, who reminds her of her late mother’s tenderness, and is dismayed to learn her aunt has slapped Amina. Throughout, Abdullah writes with poignancy and subtlety about her characters’ self-discovery as they seek a sense of home amid turbulence and change. This is worth a look.

June 1, 2021
The short stories in Abdullah's debut collection take place in small eighth-floor apartments, in spacious homes with servants, in train cars--in spaces that gradually, unexpectedly feel like home. Set primarily in Toronto, Canada, and in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Abdullah's stories trace the lives of Bangladeshi women who have immigrated to Canada. A mother worries that a long-held secret will destroy her close relationship with her beloved daughter. A newlywed moves to Toronto to join her Canadian husband, trying to fit in with his life in a country she doesn't know. A widow struggles with her traditional family role while watching her brother-in-law's new wife embrace a more modern lifestyle. A man remarries after his wife's death and finds himself confounded by his second wife's place in his world. Abdullah's characters deal with discrimination, isolation, and Islamophobia among other challenges of building lives in a new country. In beautifully descriptive prose, The Home of the Floating Lily is an evocative debut that explores family, culture, tradition, and love in places that simultaneously promise opportunity and struggle.

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