The Map of Salt and Stars

While reading through this week’s novel I couldn’t help but be reminded of Laurie Frankel’s This is How it Always is in how oral stories are woven into the narrative who’s central character is a child. Both of these novels contain a sort of “bedtime” story that a father creates, expanding it to last several sessions as a point for the narrative to return to throughout. Frankel weaves Penn’s fairytale story into the dialogue, with it being verbally shared as a bedtime routine. We saw what effect the story had on the characters and how they related to it as it was being told. However, with Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar’s novel, the story of Rawiya is provided through its own narrative. Though it was Baba that first shared it with Nour as their bedtime story, it is Nour now sharing it with us, (technically she’s telling the fig in order to reach Baba). Rawiya’s story is given its own space, to be told outside of Nour’s narrative. In the first chapter, the beginning of Rawiya’s story is sandwiched in Nour’s first person narrative, separated by asterisk. From the second chapter onwards, each chapter opens with Rawiya and these two stories run side by side. 

Although Rawiya’s story is taken out, Joukhadar indicates that it’s all being told through dialogue. The beginning line is repeated, first with Nour explaining how she will “start the way Baba always did: ‘Everybody knows the story of Rawiya...They just don’t know they know it’” (page 6). At the end of that section, Nour says she will “start again,” right before Rawiya’s first chapter begins. Rather than having an obvious intent for telling this story—as opposed for Penn having a lesson or message told through his characters—the reader is left to interpret how these stories relate and allows Rawiya and her group to become their own characters. I do not recall being attached to Stephanie, I saw her as a tool for parent and child to communicate, but I did see Rawiya as another central character. Penn intended for Stephanie to be somewhat like a reflection of Poppy, this wasn’t always so with Nour. At one point, Nour insists to herself that she isn’t Rawiya, which became a huge point of intrigue for Rawiya’s character.  

Both of these novels tie childhood, parent-child bonding, with storytelling and create secondary characters within that world. These other characters then provide another window through which to see the children, and how the parent telling the story sees the child. However, I enjoyed hearing about Rawiya’s adventure as opposed to Stephanie’s, which felt summarized. Joukhadar took the time to create a world within the novel’s world. Nour holds the story dear because of its connection to her father, and I sensed that deep love in the careful retelling.