Book Review: When We Were Sisters (OT)(Muslim girls raising themselves)

When We Were Sisters, by Fatimah Asghar (Random House, 2022, 352 pp, $27)

A good book is like a vacation, especially a cross-country drive. The journey, as well as the destination, must be enjoyable. 

When We Were Sisters is unique, one of a kind, and perhaps a trend-setter. Written as it happens to one of three little Muslim-American girls (from 4 to 9), probably the youngest one, the reader wants to reach in and take care of them. 

As the story opens, their beloved father has just died, their mother having died a while back. It is hard for children to grasp death and the changes brought, and the reader learns from each sister how they try to make sense of their new living situation and other changes without the life experiences or the words to question.

Unique Style

Written, as it happens, from a little girl's viewpoint, author Fatimah Asghar separates paragraphs with generous white space and humorously prints some pages in landscape rather than portrait with parts of each sentence on the facing page. Figuring that out was challenging and fun - and satisfying.

Lyrical

The one word for Asghar's creation, besides creative, is lyrical and this reviewer is not the only one to use lyrical.

Chaos and cruelty are also part of this story, and an uncle whose name is blacked out and whose irregular role takes time to figure out, according to NPR. Wailing and aunties of the orphans and plenty of rules, not all of which make sense. 

Do the sisters have to raise each other in such a not-normal sibling relationship?