The novel is also narrated, in part, by Latif Mahmud, the son of the real Rajab Shaaban Mahmud—a man who turns out to be a scoundrel. There's something about Lucy that makes you feel as though you've known her forever, and could easily sit in a chair on a porch, listening to her regale you with stories from all different times in her life. While Lucy is a fictional character, I can’t help but think that Elizabeth Strout might feel the same.

Related tenuously by marriage, the two men's lives have been intertwined by a series of slights and betrayal, each branch of the family grasping for the property and wealth of the deceased as their own family's prosperity rises and falls over time.

Eso causa irritación (muy peligroso para el novelista que desea que el lector se pierda en el relato), y al final, genera algo de indiferencia en el lector. And the stuff near hte end about Omanis really touched me as that is the story of my ex's family: Omanis in Zanzibar.

I also appreciate that Saleh and Latif's stories reveal as much about life as a refugee as they do about life back home and what both mean to people. The story certainly isn't linear, which was difficult for me at first, but as I relaxed into it, I came to appreciate the slower pace, the circuitous route, and all that it reveals. When he said Passport a second time, I handed it over, winicing in anticipation of abuse and threats. Funny coincidence: I ran across her mention of the attack on the Capitol on the same day the hearings started and I began watching.Lucy’s ex-husband, William drags her upstate New York, along with their daughters to get away from the Big Apple during the carnage of the first wave of the COVID pandemic. Eland books open out our understanding of other cultures, interpret the unknown, reveal different environments as well as celebrating the humour and occasional horrors of travel.

How do we fit our original home into our new home and how do come to understand ourselves in this new place? Strout has said, as did Lucy, that she always wants to know what it feels like to be another person.The Colonel is also seen, at the beginning of Max's stay, to have a crush on Miss Vavasour; Max suspects Miss Vavasour had entertained the Colonel's slight infatuation prior to Max's own arrival.