You Must Be Layla
Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Layla is ready to attend a new school, and being a hijabi is only a minor concern. She’s ready to fit in with the rest of the group, but with her sense of humour can she ever hope to stay at school past her first suspension?
I went from being really excited about this novel to being really disappointed in it rapidly. The writing style irked me. I read the first two chapters desperately hoping that the writing style was just an introduction. I didn’t find Layla a believable character. At times it seemed like the novel was just intended to explain some parts of Muslim culture, such as that women don’t need to pray at the mosque when it’s ‘that time of the month’. This detail was included in a way that just didn’t feel natural.
What also irked me about this novel was the use of numbers in Arabic words . The first one I found I thought that it was a typo! And then they kept happening, so I flipped to the back of the novel in the hopes it would explain what it meant. I thought they could be footnotes but instead it indicated a sound that couldn’t be written in English. Fine then! But why not at least attempt to use the appropriate alphabet to communicate the concept? English-speaking readers wouldn’t then be confused by numbers that meant nothing.
The ending was just too neat. I find it very difficult to believe that an adult with such deep-seated dislike of Muslim (and any outsiders) is won over in less than a day. I’m sure this novel is suitable for someone, just not me. I much preferred When Michael Met Mina, and there are other novels out there that approach the problems of being a person of colour in a world of white privilege. 2 stars.
Penguin Random House | 5th March 2019 | AU$16.99 | paperback
A quick reminder: The premise that babies born in the year 2000 are humanity’s glitch is interesting and gets more of an explanation in this novel. However, not all babies suffer from the glitch, and not all suffer in the same way. I love the way Crash reacts to meeting more Crashes! However, apparently if these guys are the ‘zeroes’ there are also going to be the ‘ones’. Where do they come from? It’s pretty unclear.
This was a torturous book to read. For a very slim book that could have taken an hour or so to zoom through, it took me literally months to get to the end. The writing style left me wondering why there were so many words used to describe simple situations. Too many things are spelled out and the passive voice of Lola is irritating and wishy-washy. The book seems as if it has come out of the author’s head in one piece, and then hasn’t been checked for its ability to connect with a reader.
Anne’s an interesting alternative heroine mainly because her story has already been determined by history. It takes any anticipation out of the story and leaves us with Anne and her strong personality. For the time, the way she is written is as a superstitious but practical woman who is determined to live her life her way. Of course we can’t know what she was like in real life, but we’d like to hope that she wasn’t a completely passive observer of her life – and that she was lucky enough to get a bit of romance apart from her arranged marriages.
I hated this novel. I finished it, but I completely skimmed the last half of it because I was impatient with the slow action and boring protagonist. Passing between the present dinner and past memories could have added some momentum, but instead just served to push me out of the narrative, and wonder why the dinner table format had been used if the novel was going to contain flashbacks anyway.
I didn’t see that ending coming. I mean, I knew that it would probably be someone out of left field, but really? That person? I’m not sure the author gave me enough warning, but perhaps a second reading would make it obvious for me. The relationships of the other characters were sweet, but they could have perhaps had a bit more backbone, particularly Ben. But I suppose not all of us are the Jack’s of the world.
At the very beginning of this novel I was bewildered by the number of characters that I was going to have to keep track of. I thought of drawing a mind-map in fact! Slowly though I kept track of the three main women and their important connections – Sophie, Claire and Bec. I generally enjoyed the past interspersed with the present, and found that although the past parts could have been excluded, they added a depth to the current day fears of the women (and men).
Suzanne is a tormented character with multiple facets that I loved. The magic here was that I could see things from her perspective and her flawed logic, even as I hated the way that she treated people. Strangely enough, I had just read 
You can tell that this novel is written by someone who actually understands Muslim culture, and isn’t just writing a novel in the ‘genre’ because it’s ‘popular’. Often I find in novels that there is a lot of going on about hijabs, when really most of the time it’s not anything out of the ordinary for the woman in question. Ayesha is comfortable with her faith even as she rebels against some of the requirements and expectations of her family.