From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

Exit West

Mohsin Hamid

Start date: September 15, 2017

Finish date: October 1, 2017

Discussion: Reading List

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Reading List

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What Members Thought

Apr 24, 2019 Ruth rated it it was amazing

Loved it. So beautifully written I was willing to go wherever it took me, even through all those doors.

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Nov 16, 2017 Jane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reading-for-a-second-time, recentfiction, favorites, environmental-issues, read-this-book-again, magic-realism

Extraordinarily beautiful writing. There's nothing flashy about it...just one perfect sentence after another. It's about migration, about family, and love. It has everything to do with the immigrant situation in the world right now...but, at the same time, the author imagines an entirely different solution than anything we could try in the current world, and yet.

I love the understatement, and how it feels truer than more effusive books like Salt Houses. I read it slowly because I was trying to s Extraordinarily beautiful writing. There's nothing flashy about it...just one perfect sentence after another. It's about migration, about family, and love. It has everything to do with the immigrant situation in the world right now...but, at the same time, the author imagines an entirely different solution than anything we could try in the current world, and yet.

I love the understatement, and how it feels truer than more effusive books like Salt Houses. I read it slowly because I was trying to save the last hundred pages until our book club meets (tomorrow). It's clear that everyone is blown away by the writing, and the book is mysterious enough as it begins that we kept sharing small discoveries we'd made as we discussed the first 70 pages.

One thing, an odd little thing, is how brilliantly the author uses the word "and." One gorgeous run and on sentence after another. And yet the writing feels spare, completely controlled. How does he do this. I want to share more, but I need to have the book beside me so that I can share actual examples.

Here's a beautiful one: If Saeed's father came with them and he said again that he could not, but that they must go, he said it softly, like a prayer, and she sat there with him in silence and the minutes passed, and in the end she promised, and it was an easy promise to make because she had that time no thoughts of leaving Saeed, but it was also a difficult one because in making it she felt she was abandoning the old man, and even if he did have his siblings and his cousins, and might now go live with them or have them come live with him, they could not protect him as Saeed and Nadia could, and so by making the promise he demanded she make she was in a sense killing him, but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind. (98)

(on 43 there's another example) (and again, between Nadia and Saeed on pages 107-109) (126 and 127)...On each of these pages I fall under the spell of how beautiful and poignant the language is without ever being overdone. The sentences unroll like smoke or like a mist, entering without announcing their gorgeousness.

on page 12, a passage about Saeed's parents meeting and about their connection in later years. Nadia calls Saeed's father "father"...he calls her "daughter" (80). The connection between people and their objects...the evocativeness of objects (81) Nadia noticed a certain friction between them. She was uncertain what to do to disarm the cycles of annoyance they seemed to be entering into with one another, since once begun such cycles are difficult to break, in fact the opposite, as if each makes the threshold for irritation next time a bit lower, as with certain allergies. 133

Nadia) embraced the dust and the pollution and the little bugs that sometimes went into your mouth and made you recoil and even spit, but after spitting grin, and grin with a wildness.

And so many other passages I want to reread and think about 179, 186, 204, 209, 217. ...more

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Nov 28, 2018 Jessica rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, i-own, audio, 2018, unnamed-bookclub

I find this one very hard to review - I've waffled between 3 and 4 stars, but ultimately I think it was beautifully written. The doors or portals were totally unexpected for me, and took a bit of getting used to - but were an interesting device to portray the migration or immigrant experience. What genre is this? Magical Realism, Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Literary Fiction? All of the above maybe. I finished the audio version - read by the author - it was beautifully done. His voice was very soothing ho ...more

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Aug 04, 2018 Melissa rated it really liked it

Shelves: directed-reading, britain, migration

A story of today and tomorrow, told through the lives of its two protagonists, young lovers in a war-torn Middle Eastern metropolis who join in a mass migration West and find the limits of their partnership as they travel through Mykonos, London, and Marin. The realism can be disturbing, while the fantasy fills one with hope. Beautifully written.

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Jun 20, 2024 Ardita rated it really liked it

It has a gentle beginning of two people who got closer amid an escalating war. The middle part is about their journey for a more peaceful life.

The story focuses on experiences and emotions that reflect factual details. It has a dash of magical realism that may bother people who expect true-story inspiration out of Hamid's story. It reads like an essay to some extent. Almost no conversational scenes.

I would say Hamid presents the alternate universe of The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) meets The ...more

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