Aria

by Nassim Assefi and TurtleMe

Jasmine is a cancer specialist and single mother in Seattle, long estranged from her Iranian parents and heritage. When faced with the sudden accidental death of Aria, her five-year-old daughter, she... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151012938
• ISBN13: 9780151012930
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

exotic, touching, insightful

Whether you are a parent, a traveler, a child, a partner or from a family that comes from elsewhere you will appreciate this book. It's sensual, moving, insightful and sometimes even humorous. Totally 5 star plus.

I recommend ARIA to any person experiencing major grief, especially parents

From Mountain Mama, Seattle, WA (5 stars, highest rec) I thought I had grieved as much as possible when my daughter died 6 years ago (for we had known for some years that she had AIDS), however earlier in this year, a friend gave me ARIA. Though it was a book that was difficult to put down, I could only read the first few chapters, because it was too sad for me. When finally I was able to finish it, I found myself at my pc writing a long letter to my daughter, inspired by the main character's correspondence with her dead daughter. Many of my thoughts and feelings of the past 6 years, as well as from my daughter's childhood, came flooding out on those pages. When I finished writing, I realized I had said some of the things to her that I had not told her before. I felt as if a silent burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I now feel that I have connected with her in a deeper way than I had all these years. I recommend ARIA to any person experiencing major grief, especially bereaved parents. The story is beautiful, the loss is universal, and the impact (at least for me) is potent and therapeutic. Of note, the author, Nassim Assefi, is donating a portion of her royalties to the Compassionate Friends Organization, a nationwide parental bereavement charity.

A tour de force first novel!

A truly engaging story, unsettling despite its lyricism. Before I realized, I was drawn into the life of the main character, her conflicted heart over her lover, and her unabashed devotion to, desolution from, and ultimate reintegration of the memories that arose from her pain in coming to terms with her child's loss. I especially liked the best friend character, a classic foil, with quirky grit and self-effacing humor. A tour de force for a first novel!

Coming Home

Nassim Assefi's novel is compelling, haunting and infinitely believable as she deftly weaves an intricate story through letters from various narrators. Throughout this first novel,the reader is able to witness Jasmine's personal anguish and ultimate transformation as she attemps to come to terms with the untimely death of her partner; her 5-year old daughter Aria's accidental and tragic death; the evolution of a deeper friendship with her loyal best friend, Dottie; the steady, slightly puzzled, devastated devotion of her abandoned lover, Alexander, and Jasmine's parents rejection of all that she has created and all that she has loved. Ms. Assefi takes the reader on an armchair voyage of Jasmine's self-discovery around the world, from maize fields in Guatemala to a silent cave in Nepal and ultimately to Iran, where Jasmine is able to face the transformation of grief through the sprit selves of her daughter and her beloved grandmother, and find an uneasy but necessary reconciliation with her mother and father. A reminder to hold those we love close and cherish our memories.

On open pomegranate

Aria is a straightforward meditation. The novel examines grief by the meandering path of sorrow, joy, hopelessness and wondering. Following the death of her five-year-old daughter, Aria, a profound loss that nearly six years later follows the death of her lover and the father of the child, Justin, Jasmine can simply no longer face the dailyness of being in the town where her only self, Aria, died. An oncologist, who has faced death with her patients, Jasmine thought she would understand better. But when the monstrous tragedy strikes, when all that is left of family on American soil is taken from her, she flees. In a series of letters to the important people left to her, living and dead, intimate and removed, the heart of Jasmine pours forth with dignity and grace. This is a story of looking for meaning, of looking for salvation and faith, of looking for a reason to live. From Guatemala to Lhasa, she is comforted, as in a travelogue--briefly removed from her sorrow as she ponders the newness before her. But as many have found, a geographic gallop does little to assuage the ultimate depths. It is not until she reaches her parents' native Iran and reunites with them that her personal and cultural history begins to triumph over the deeply personal aloneness. Aria is, in the long run, a celebration of living. From maize fields to the desert, something is always alive, is always struggling, is always annihilated, is always triumphant. It is this that the reader learns with her. It is this that Assefi brings as a gift to the reader--an open pomegranate, bleeding "the depths of sweetness" after we have "swallowed the sour."