This was a random used-bookstore find, which can be great or still. I mean, I hate hate hate the hype machine, I hate manufactured buzz, I hate the assumption that large print runs = large fan base = a necessarily superior book. But sometimes? The books that don't get the buzz and the fame really just aren't as good. And this is one of them.The book started out very impressive. Porochista's got a lovely way with words, with long, twisty, metaphor-heavy sentences. She creates a very good sense of...

I'm skimming through the reviews and somehow managed the opposite reactions of most people here. Properly loved the writing style, didn't find it at all tedious. For writing that is so wordy, I appreciated that it wasn't overly flowery and to an extent was written as realistically as someone might speak. That said, I felt this book was at its best in its first half--the thoughtful and relatively plotless half. It hit a weak spot when the author's bitterness toward money began to show, referring

Porochista Khakpour's first novel, which received critical acclaim but not a great deal of popular attention, explores themes such as the relationship between fathers and sons, the role of memory in our lives, ethnic identity, and the pain of exile, in this case from revolutionary Iran. It is also a pretty intriguing post-9/11 novel and deserves to be considered as worthy 9/11 fiction alongside "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "Falling Man," and "The Emperor's Children."What I most appreci...

Boy, oh, boy, the men in this book were awful.

I had a really hard time getting into this book because of the author's writing style. And on top of it, I just didn't really like any of the characters very much.

I couldn't get into this book and eventually gave up.

A very good first novel. I especially liked the interplay of the themes: the burning flying objects and the mixing of worlds. On the latter, the sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie", where the mixing of the magical with the scientific world is a secret, is a template for the mixing problems of immigrants with native-born Americans, of dream with real world, of sane with insane people, of history with the present and so on throughout the book.It ends very succinctly and elegantly, but that elegance is gai...

I had a hard time caring for any of the characters in this book. They were a dysfunctional family but with no redeeming qualities. I do not think that the dysfunction was from being immigrants -- I think the characters were already dysfunctional. I know there was a lot of angst for the son growing up in 2 cultures. He felt that he didn't want anything to do with his birth culture (or parents) & he also felt the American culture didn't want anything to do with him. The real problems throughout we...

Sons and Other Flammable Objects, revolves around the life of the Adam (properly pronounced Odd-damn, as some of the wittiest writing in the novel explains) family. The novel focuses with laser-like quality on the life of Xerxes Adam, the wayward, confused, bicultural Iranian-American son, whose obsessions (with Barbara Eden, mediocrity, a desperate desire to assimilate, and determination never to return to his family) ground the novel.Sons, is a modern-day bildungsroman, albeit one that takes p...

very hard to get through and not worth it in the end.

This was an interesting book though slightly tedious to read. And it contained charecte3rs with whom I had little to no sense of connection. It's helpful to remember that messed up families don't need a civil war or a revolution to screw them up--and to that end this book was inisghtful. But generally not sure what i was supposed to take away from it nor I am sure that I did.

Second time reading. Again, I don't quite understand why more people haven't read this book--it's really fantastic. Very carefully written, the prose is beautiful, and the story rewards multiple reads. I'm teaching it this semester to students who, for the most part, don't read for pleasure, and many of them have told me how much they've been enjoying it.

Read this for yet another lit class. I love everything about this novel, and I met the author who was amazing which made the novel better. Really informative on the Muslim culture and how the main character tries to fit into his Persian and American culture during his childhood and Sept. 11th. Def read this!

It seems to have been marketed as a 9/11 novel about Iranian Americans, but it should speak to anyone with a family history of communication problems. I might have given it more stars, but I know the author ... must appear neutral.

I first encountered Porochista Khakpour through her New York Times article, 'My Nine Years as a Middle-Eastern American'. Khakpour's unsparing and candid account of life under Bush's America, and in particular the impact of 9/11 (cab drivers looking at her with suspicion when she started speaking Farsi on the phone), made me want to explore her work more deeply (there's a very good YouTube video where Khakpour talks about the responses to that New York Times article). Porochista Khakpour's novel...

SPOILERS: I wish the plight of this family concerned me more, but it just didn't. This is a novel of character's thoughts and the action itself leaves much to be desired. There is just not much story here. The son, Xerxes, is a mopy, whiny character who never changes, even into young adulthood. All he ever seems to do is complain about his family and that gets old. The father, Darius, another one who is never happy, is probably deserving of his families' scorn. He is not very likeable either. Th...

I have never read a book that provided so many characters interior monologues, and come away knowing so little about them. I am baffled by this book, by the disassociation that seems to exist between the author's words and the things they describe, much more than the purposeful and situational disassociation of the characters from the things they loved.And the end, at the airport, with character D and character S . . . oh, that was just creepy.

I have to give this book 5 stars because Porochista is my hag, but it's also a really REALLY good book. I'm really inspired and impressed. It took me a while to get into her narrative style, but once it clicked, it was like Porochista was reading to me, making me laugh with her wisecracks, hilarious asides and turns of phrase. Hers is quite a unique voice. Apart from what you've probably read in other reviews, the thing that touched me most about this book was the way Porochista so sensetively a...

Porochista Khakpour has a unique writing style that kept me reading this mostly plot-less book. I do not think the author's choice to haphazardly throw 9/11 into the mix helped with the narrative and felt cliche and over-written. Not great, not horrible, too long.