Book Blog #279: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Title: Exit West

Author: Mohsin Hamid

# of Pages: 213 (ebook)

Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Synopsis: In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.

Review: "[He] advocated a banding together of migrants along religious principles, cutting across divisions of race or language or nation, for what did those divisions matter now in a world full of doors, the only divisions that mattered now were between those who sought the right of passage and those who would deny them passage" (155).

I had relatively high expectations for this book (as it was recommended to me and was a nominee for a Goodreads Choice Award), which may explain why it just did not hit the mark for me. The concept of the story was interesting for sure; star-crossed lovers find their relationship challenged by living a migrant, in which migration is made easier through randomly appearing doors. 

What I did enjoy about the book was the thought experiment on what the world would be like if the only limitation to migration was whether the home country or the destination country imposed restrictions; in this story, migration itself is made out to be as simple as finding and stepping through a door. It makes you think; although it may not address these issues explicitly, this book closely ties to many relevant issues today related to migrants: refugees, open borders, etc. 

What really killed it for me was the writing style. Hamid would jump between the third person narration of the main characters, Nadia and Saeed, to a brief narration of some other random people in various parts of the world. While this was interesting at times to see how migration via doors is affecting people across this futuristic(?) world, it mostly disrupts the flow of the story.

Secondly, Hamid employs analogies GENEROUSLY. He seems to only be satisfied in describing something if at least one (often long) analogy is used. Some examples:

"Saeed partly resisted the pull of his phone. He found the antenna too powerful, the magic it summoned too mesmerizing, as though he were eating a banquet of limitless food, stuffing himself, until he felt dazed and sick, and so he removed or hidden or restricted all but a few applications" (39).

"...his quiet grunts like those of a man exercising, or having sex" (104).

Finally, Hamid writes so many run on sentences. An artistic choice, I'm sure, but there's a reason why most things don't employ that sort of style; it's hard to follow and stay engaged. All of these things made me struggle to get through the book, despite it being relatively short. I was considering giving it three stars initially, but the writing style wore me down so much that I became annoyed, which is why it's getting a low rating.

I would not recommend this book.