Good People by Patmeena Sabit review addictive mystery caters to modern attention spans

"Patmeena Sabit's debut is constructed from a chorus of short testimonies none more than a few pages, some just a few lines about the death of Zorah Sharaf, an Afghan American teenager who has drowned in a canal at the wheel of the family car. We hear from family, friends and those in the wider community neighbours, teachers, schoolmates, journalists, the guy who found the body as well as those involved in the investigation (though very little from the police), and bites of media commentary."

"Versions are multiple and contradictory. The Sharafs are perfect, loving, tight-knit. They are dangerously dysfunctional. The novel is, in essence, a crime mystery in which a community turns detective and puts a grieving family on trial. It is also a sharp portrait of an immigrant community in the modern United States, an anatomy of poisonous gossip and a commentary on wider societal divisions."

"We learn, from all these snappy voices and snippets, that Zorah's parents, Rahmat and Maryam, arrived in the US from Kabul in the late 1990s with nothing. They had four children: Zorah, her older brother, and two much younger siblings. Rahmat worked night and day, and weathered several business failures before his cleaning enterprise took off. He is now a multimillionaire entrepreneur in international imports and fast food franchises; they are living the American dream in an upmarket Virginia neighbourhood."

Good People is constructed from short testimonies—brief accounts from family, friends, neighbours, teachers, journalists, the man who found the body, and others involved in the investigation—about the death of Zorah Sharaf, an Afghan American teenager who drowned while driving the family car into a canal. Multiple, contradictory versions of the Sharaf family emerge: perfect and loving, or dangerously dysfunctional. The community collectively investigates and puts the grieving family on trial. The narrative portrays an immigrant community, exposes poisonous gossip and societal divisions, and traces the parents' journey from Kabul to multimillionaire success, which provokes envy and unresolved cultural tensions.

Read at www.theguardian.com