Stationery Shop (Kamali)

The Stationery Shop 
Marjan Kamali, 2019
Gallery Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982107499


Summary
A poignant, heartfelt novel of lost love explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.

Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.

Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once.

Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows.

For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless.

With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1970-71
• Where—Turkey
• Raised—Turkey, Kenya, Germany, Iran, and the U.S.
• Education—B.A., University of California-Berkeley; M.B.A., Columbia University; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts


Marjan Kamali was born in Turkey to Iranian parents. Her father was in the diplomatic corp, and Kamali spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, post-revolutionary Iran. In 1982, the family moved to Forest Hills, Queens, in New York City.

Kamali holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. To distract herself from spreadsheet drudgery while studying for her M.B.A. at Columbia, she began to write at fiction, eventually penning a short story that would become the opening chapter of her debut novel.

That debut, Together Tea, was published in 2013. It became a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist, an NPR WBUR Good Read, and a Target Emerging Author Selection. In 2019, Kamali issued her second novel, The Stationery Shop.

Kamail's other work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in two anthologies: Tremors and Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been. An excerpt from The Stationery Shop was published in Solstice Literary Magazine and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Marjan lives with her husband and two children in the Boston area. (Adapted from the publisher and Boston Athenaeum.)

Book Reviews
[M]oving.… The refined, melancholic mood of their story extends to Roya’s feelings about the Iran she left behind, which vanishes completely as the Shah’s authoritarian government gives way to an even more despotic clerical rule after the 1979 revolution.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


[A] wistful look at two idealists and the world they should have inherited.… Kamali offers a paean not just to lost love, but to the poetry, food, and culture that fed their memories for 60 years.
Christian Science Monitor


Grab your tissues.… Marjan Kamali’s second novel channels love in the time of coup d’états. Set among the political upheaval of 1950s Tehran, The Stationery Shop follows teenager Roya as she discovers the power of love, loss, and then, decades later, fate. And did we mention you’ll need tissues?
Boston Magazine


I! Am! Obsessed! With! This! Book!… Think The Notebook, only better (no offense, Ryan Gosling).
Cosmopolitan.com


A beautiful, emotionally honest story about first love, deep family bonds, and fate.
Pop Sugar


[A] tender story of lifelong love.… The loss of love and changing worlds is vividly captured by Kamali; time and circumstances kept these lovers apart, but nothing diminishes their connection. Readers will be swept away.
Publishers Weekly


The unfurling stories in Kamali’s sophomore novel will stun readers as the aromas of Persian cooking wafting throughout convince us that love can last a lifetime. For those who enjoy getting caught up in romance while discovering unfamiliar history of another country.
Library Journal


Kamali paints an evocative portrait of 1950s Iran and its political upheaval, and she cleverly writes the heartbreak of Roya and Bahman’s romance to mirror the tragic recent history of their country. Simultaneously briskly paced and deeply moving, this will appeal to fans of Khaled Hosseini and should find a wide audience.
Booklist


Sixty years after her first love failed to meet her in a market square, Roya Khanom Archer finally has the chance to see him. But will he break her heart again?… A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The first two chapters show us very different stages in Roya’s life. Discuss the similarities and differences between her life as a married woman in New England and her life as a teenager living in Tehran.

2. On page 3, Roya observes, "For hadn’t she married a man who was reasonable and, my goodness, unbelievably understanding? Hadn’t she, in the end, not married that boy, the one she met so many decades ago in a small stationery shop in Tehran, but lassoed her life instead to this Massachusetts-born pillar of stability?" How are Bahman and Walter different? How are they similar? What do you think Roya was looking for in each of them? How do her expectations for a relationship change throughout the story?

3. On page 56, after discovering Bahman’s mother believes he should marry Shahla, Roya tries to contain her anger: "This was the societal web of niceties and formalities and expected good female behavior that often suffocated her. But she had no choice but to bear it, to try to navigate within it. That much she knew." Discuss the importance of "saving face" for Iranian women in the 1950s. Do those expectations differ from what was expected of American women? What about women today? Research the cultural expectations of young women in Iran and discuss as a group. How are they similar or different to the expectations you or the women in your life have experienced?

4. Roya and Zari have very different personalities and ways of looking at life, and the two sisters often argue and clash. But there is a bond between them that is unbreakable. Have you experienced that simultaneous closeness and clashing with siblings in your life? What do you think it is about the sibling relationship in general and Roya and Zari’s sisterhood in particular that lends itself to such contradictions?"

5. Throughout the course of her courtship in 1953, Roya experiences passion and longing in new, surprising ways. For example, on page 84, when she watches Jahangir and Bahman dance, she is filled with desire. Compare Roya’s desire as a young woman to Badri’s. Do their social classes influence their actions? What would be the repercussions if Roya acted as Badri did in her youth?

6. Marjan Kamali employs foreshadowing as a plot device in The Stationery Shop. Discuss how it adds to the story and moves the narrative along. How would the novel read without foreshadowing?

7. In the 1950s, women in Tehran weren’t allowed the freedoms, though still limited, that women in America were. How does Roya’s family challenge those social expectations? How does that inform Roya’s life as grown woman?

8. In chapter 14, the readers learn about the history between Mr. Fakhri and Bahman’s mother. After reading this, why do you think Badri treated Roya so terribly?

9. On page 172, Roya struggles with cultural differences in flirting: "Sometimes there didn’t seem to be any rules. It had been far easier in Iran where tradition and tarof who your grandfather was often dictated how to behave." How do flirting and dating in both Tehran and America challenge Roya and her expectations for relationships? Discuss the differences in how Roya and Zari approach dating. Why do you think Zari feels more comfortable in America than Roya does? Do you think Roya would have had an easier time dating in America if she had never met Bahman?

10. In chapter 18, Bahman reveals the struggles of living with a mentally ill mother in Tehran. Discuss mental illness and its stigma as a group. How was mental illness viewed throughout time, and how does the treatment of the mentally ill vary across cultures? How is the way that Bahman and his father care for his mother countercultural?

11. At the beginning of chapter 19, Roya and Walter go on a double date with Zari and her boyfriend, Jack. Jack offends Roya with the way he speaks about Iran and its food and culture. Do you think Roya is right in feeling offended? Would you have been offended? Discuss cultural ignorance and bias as a group.

12. The characters in The Stationery Shop experience several devastating losses, from love to identity to miscarriage. How do they recover, and how do those losses forever change them? Can your group relate to these sorrows? What losses in your lives have forever changed you?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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