Fiction reviews: The Stationery Shop of Tehran and three more titles

The Stationery Shop of Tehran
Marjan Kamali
Simon & Schuster, $29.99

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In mid-20th century Tehran, two teenagers meet in a stationery shop and fall in love. Roya and Bahman are both under the covert protection of the shop owner, and with his help they get to the point where they are engaged to be married. But the shop owner has secrets of his own, and between the opposition of Bahman’s unstable mother and the increasing political unrest in the country, the relationship is struggling. This well-plotted story shows how many different forces can combine to thwart individual desires and plans. Most contemporary Westerners’ knowledge of Iran probably doesn’t go back much further than the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But almost all of this novel is set in Tehran in 1953, and the insight it provides into modern Iranian history will give readers a new perspective into the backstory of a country that is once again in the news.

Meet Me at Lennon’s
Melanie Myers
UQP, $29.95

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Using the Battle of Brisbane as her historical focal point, Melanie Myers paints an intriguing picture of life in Brisbane during World War II, with its recurrent tensions between Australian and American soldiers. Meanwhile, in the present day, a student called Olivia is researching for her PhD thesis on a forgotten Brisbane playwright when she stumbles across a news story about a wartime murder, the victim known as the River Girl, the murderer never caught. Scholars of history, including literary history, must have good detective skills in order to unearth the past, and one of the most engaging things about this novel is the way that Myers shows Olivia’s quest for knowledge. The book was originally written as a thesis in creative writing and still shows some traces of that, but the subject matter and the plot will keep readers engaged.

State of Fear
Tim Ayliffe
Simon & Schuster, $29.99

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This is Tim Ayliffe’s second novel featuring John Bailey, a battle-scarred journalist and former Middle East Corespondent. In London to give a speech, he witnesses the violent murder of a woman by a red-haired teenage convert to Islamic extremism. From this opening scene onwards, we see that Bailey is a man who refuses do what he’s told by the police, which is unfortunate given that his lover is a senior policewoman and he routinely ignores her instructions in that role, giving an unusual twist to the romance sub-plot. Ayliffe himself is an experienced journalist and managing editor of television and video for ABC News, so he can be presumed to know this sort of material very well. This well-plotted thriller about a deadly global terrorist pursuing a personal vendetta sometimes seems over the top, but — disturbingly — probably isn’t.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi; trans., Geoffrey Trousselot
Picador, $18.99

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This is sweet, fable-like tale about a magical seat in a cafe where you can, if you wish, go back in time. The chair is sought after by people who wish to go back to a particular point where they can solve mysteries or make good some mistake they have made with someone close to them. But revisiting the past here is hedged around with all kinds of conditions and restrictions and rules, of the Cinderella kind where the carriage turns back into a pumpkin at midnight. There are four separate tales of this experience but the characters remain consistent and eventually interact. If you write a story about time travel then there are many logical inconsistencies and philosophical dilemmas that need to be addressed, and Toshikazu Kawaguchi touches on most of these with a light hand. This little book is an odd read, but also a charming one.

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